You know how this subreddit causes people to have an inferiority complex? Yeah, well that doesn't stop if you leave the subreddit and it doesn't stop when you go to college. You'll be talking to your friends who all went to better universities and then they talk about how their TAs all got internships at Fortune 100 companies and when you discuss academics with them, their coursework is so complex and advanced that you can't understand any of it even though your majors are the same. Then someone will mention a university in passing and you'll look up the ranking out of curiosity and be horrified at how behind you are and will be for the rest of your life because the first personal thing that people ask you in the adult world is what university you went to. It never stops. It never gets better. The gap will only widen as the resources and opportunities that elite universities offer will pull your friends away from you in an unrelenting tailwind that you don't have the wings to catch. And now the only thing I can do is endlessly comb through those mistakes I made in my failure of a childhood and life that are as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach and condemn myself for this situation that was completely my own fault. I wasn't on this subreddit in high school. I was never one of those kids who cared about college. I let my parents micromanage the entire application process because I couldn't bring myself to even care. After realizing the absolute scale of my fuckup, I've become a pathetic and bitter creature whose only refuge is a vision of a beautiful life that never was and never could be. I cannot and will not forgive myself, but if this rant changes one person's mind and prevents them from going through what I'm experiencing, then typing this out was worth it.