I didn't go to the best college (not a bad one either), I wasn't top of my class in high school. I moved to Boston and was surrounded by MIT and Harvard people

I didn't go to the best college (not a bad one either), I wasn't top of my class in high school. I moved to Boston and was surrounded by MIT and Harvard people. I had a complex for years about never being good enough because I wasn't credentialed in that way. I poured hours upon hours in my early career getting better and working late and reading incessantly and writing and rewriting PR's. Working through design tradeoffs over and over. Working on passion projects at work that no one was asking for. And at the end of all that, I was easily playing at or above the level around me. A lot of people stop investing in themselves post college and feel that after they've done the school thing and secured the job they can coast, but I'll tell you that if you deeply invest in yourself in your work years and don't just do what's expected, you will see the growth and change and it will be marked. You can't reclaim those early years. Have some empathy for your younger self, you may have been avoiding the pain of living. You may still be, get a good therapist. If not just know that those companies worked very hard to create random reward loops that your brain ate like candy and the real world will absolutely not reward you like that.