I've had the same experience. I grew up in Staten Island, the son of a couple of Brooklyn Italians. As a kid I had what I now hear as a comically heavy Brookly

I've had the same experience. I grew up in Staten Island, the son of a couple of Brooklyn Italians. As a kid I had what I now hear as a comically heavy Brooklyn accent. As a middle-middle class kid surrounded by other kids like me, I considered my accent normal. As I got older and was exposed to people from outside our little bubble, I began to notice their reactions to my accent, which were always in jest but affected me just the same. Hearing their jokes and their own accents, I began associate the 'standard' American accent with upperclassness, which I wanted to achieve. So I consciously worked on my accent over a number of years. By the end of high school, my R's were nearly properly rounded. By the end of college, my accent had almost completely gone. Today, it is 100% gone. I speak like a journalist from Ohio, except with more swearing. In many ways, I miss the accent. I feel like an outsider wherever I am, whether it's at work (where I feel like I'm playing a part to fit in) or at a deli, buying a mortadella sandwich, where it feels like returning to a place I've left. But 'fixing' the accent has undoubtedly made it easier for me to advance my career.