I think your advice to relax and focus on slow, steady improvement is on point, but imo you are really overstating the bit about low expectations for new grads.

I think your advice to relax and focus on slow, steady improvement is on point, but imo you are really overstating the bit about low expectations for new grads. no reasonable company will make a new grad solely responsible for some critical part of their product, but most will be disappointed if your main accomplishment in your first year on the job was "got onboarded". the expectation is that you may need some hand-holding, but ultimately you will get stuff done. at my company, the people that assumed the expectation for their productivity was "approximately zero" were quite surprised to see the difference in second-year raises between them and their new grad peers.