Don't feel bad. Don't forget that a lot of opportunities in life are positional: there's a contest to get them, and the loser can lose for entirely different re

Don't feel bad. Don't forget that a lot of opportunities in life are positional: there's a contest to get them, and the loser can lose for entirely different reasons than competence. A tiny bit of noise is all it takes to change the winner from one person to another. And for every contest where there's a line, there are a lot of people who are really close to the line. And every opportunity that someone gets tends to give them more down that path later on. All those smart people doing stuff get to do more smart people stuff. That guy who scraped into medical school is a doctor, and the guy who almost made it isn't. Same goes for almost every profession. What you can do however, is to learn those things that are not subject to competition. Basically everything that you can learn academically is that kind of thing, until you need to get a PhD advisor to take you on. With a bit of intellectual maturity, you can also know whether you understand something. The satisfaction is entirely your own. Ultimately, positional goods aren't actually all that satisfying. Do you even want the respect of someone who respects you for being rich or accomplished? You can have all the friends in the world regardless.