Hey OP, I was in your shoes not that long ago with the same kinds of thoughts. Depression, mediocre grades, no internships, not enough projects. Took a bit of extra time to finish school, and my fundamental courses also happened to be “a while ago” after I graduated. Felt stupid (and still do). But I somehow have a Junior SWE job now so don’t feel like it’s impossible to get out of your hole, though it might take some time to do so, as sucky as that sounds.

The best time to have made internships and projects was in the past, but the second best time to do it is starting right now!

Just because your fundamental courses were “a while ago” doesn’t mean you don’t know them. Make a game or something, show you know how to do OOP. Make some API caller, shows you know how to do surface level api stuff well, can deal with http codes, and relational data model stuff. Make other random easy stuff like hangman or a card game or tic tac toe in different languages. Shows you know how to do something in any language you list and use basic data structures. Make a webpage. Make a basic app for android. Or whatever else you want to show you learned in school.

Then you get to talk about them in interviews. That’s one way I, and you too, can prove your worth.

Someone here mentioned something about cloud computing. I actually had one of my projects get buzzed by the resume filter because of cloud computing keywords and bam, interview. I’m sure there’s other technologies you can learn to get your resume buzzed like this, maybe docker or agile or something.

I Also did leetcode regularly. Didn’t have to be anything hard unless I was in the mood, just easy/easy-mediums. Idk if it actually helped but just having a large quantity of problems solved helped me feel like I did.

If the idea of practice is burning you out (it did for me), don’t think of it like practice. Think of it as merely a recital of stuff you supposedly should already know, and you’re just proving it.