Going full academic can indeed ruin a person, but there's a way to prevent that: a social circle that includes at least some people who are not academics. They

Going full academic can indeed ruin a person, but there's a way to prevent that: a social circle that includes at least some people who are not academics. They can provide emotional support while you're earning your degree, drag you out of the ivory tower every once in a while (kicking and screaming, if they must) both before and after the degree, and generally keep you grounded enough to remember that you are not, in fact, on a higher plane of existence. That's valuable.