For about the last year, which was my senior year, I’ve been having what feels like pretty extreme anxiety over where I went to college. In high school I was your classic overachiever, had a weighted GPA approaching 5.0, took all the AP classes I could, was a serious student athlete (swimmer) year round, etc. I also went to an exceptionally good and extremely competitive high school that was preparing us all for college. I had expectations that I would go to an Ivy League school (or Ivy League adjacent like Stanford). I don’t know at this point if these expectations were self-imposed or if they came from my peers or my parents (I had a very strict father where straight As and athletic performance were hammered into me). When all was said and done, I ended up going to Ohio State University (I’m from Ohio). It made sense because my tuition was only a few thousand in total after scholarships and I got into the honors program. I got my degrees in neuroscience, English (creative writing), and a minor in classical humanities. I recognize that OSU is a great school and everyone knows it, it’s a “public ivy”, etc., but I can’t shake the feeling now that I would have been better off somewhere “better”. My entire identity for the longest time has been tied to academics and my perceived intelligence. Since I went to a school that I felt was not “good enough”, it feels like my identity is sort of crashing. I constantly compare myself to others in a somewhat obsessive way since the only real mode I know to operate through is anxiety, obsession, and self-hatred, so I sort of rationalize it as “if I hate myself enough then I’ll work myself up to eventually be good enough and then I’ll like myself”. From what I’ve learned from my neuroscience degree, it seems to me like I may have OCD since these are typically obsessive thoughts. I obsess over the ranking of schools, what other people are doing, and the thought that because I didn’t go to a good enough school I’ll never have a truly successful career and make an impact in the world. I want to “redeem” myself by going to a more prestigious university for my masters but worry I won’t be good enough again and that there’s a deeper problem that will continue. In summary, I want to figure out how I can stop obsessing, be happy with my choice of school, and learn to not see myself as a failure.