I don’t wanna be friends with you

There’s this guy at college who has helped with with my assignments before (he’s a straight A candidate). We don’t really chat or meet up but have in the past and talked about topics I consider personal enough to think that this is more of a befriending situation than a regular acquaintance. However entertaining some of our chats were, I mostly feel unhappy talking to him. He’s so immersed in our major that he does little to nothing more than that during his free time, all we talk about is anything relating to this subject. And I quite honestly can’t keep up since I’m not as good at it because it’s my major but not my life. This may sound very bitter and self conscious but I’m actually just very confused by our interactions. He very well knows that I’m not as eloquent on the topics as he is yet he still brings them up anytime we speak and nothing else. I’ve started to feel like he’s using me for an ego boost of some sorts as I’m clearly not performing as well but at the same time he sends me articles he finds interesting and we have met up before at his request to hang out. My point is, I feel uncomfortable and just plain incompatible with him as a person but also don’t know how to reject his small talk when he comes up to me at college. I don’t wanna be rude, I just want to keep him at a distance where I don’t feel forced to talk about personal matters anymore. Why I feel like this is a problem at all? I can’t say for sure ignoring him would hurt him in the first place and I may have exaggerated the relevance of my presence in his life, I’m having a hard time rejecting people in general and this is the most recent example. Advice would be appreciated.