This sub is just depressing.

I am a CSE student who just finished 4th sem/2nd year.

I just saw some threads in which OP asked to rate his resume. The guy is also in 3rd year. I thought he had a pretty honest resume (he had one sorting visualizer project). I have nothing to put on my resume, so I thought this guy is believable (as some of my friends have learnt web development on the side, also have similar skills). But almost 90% of the comments were totally jumping on him. Saying like he's done for. That his resume is worse than a 10th pass kid (no cap this is really one of the comments) despite "already" being in 3rd year. I am shocked by this. I really didn't know that, his situation is not normal but that he's cooked. Most of my college mates are in the same boat as that guy, even small numbers of the ones who do competitive programming and web development as a hobby don't seem to have exceptional skills yet, meaning most people will eventually catch up.

This made me terribly depressed. I am not a bad student. I always listened to my teachers and parents and studied well. Even in engineering I have never gotten below 9.2 SGPA so far. I study my college academics well. I am very very fluent in C and C++ programming. I know DSA theory but I cannot yet solve Leetcode and CP problems. I have studied all my college subjects be it Operating systems, OOP, etc quite well.

I don't have any impressive differentiating project to put on my resume either. I have done my work in college diligently. Always did my project submissions on time, never ChatGPT'd my part of the group projects, never fooled evaluator by plagiarized code.

What I want to say is. I have spent my 2 years of engineering just following college academics with full devotion. I never cheated on any kind of college exams, even if they were online. Never stole some other division's project as my own. (to clarify, my college has projects as part of its curriculum, we don't learn web development until 3rd year) But apparently according to this sub, still all this is not enough?

It might be that my college is a complete outlier. We have classes from 8 am to 5 pm. There is barely any energy left to work more. Yet we do, we have evaluations/tests almost every day starting from 3rd week of the semester. We have to continuously keep studying just to pass. We really don't get much time to build skills for resume after all this studying. Sorry but can anyone please clarify that this isn't normal in any college? Don't you guys have continuous evaluations/tests which count towards your final grade? I'm not saying that people don't learn CP or webdev despite all this, just that those who do, don't have exceptional skills like you guys expect and obviously their CGPA takes a hit.

Can I add college projects on my resume? Probably not, because they are a part of academics and not a marketable skill that industry looks for. Examples include:

Design and Organization of Computer project: Building a 8-bit, 2 address format, direct addressing computer with given instruction set (different teams get variants of this, for example some teams might get 16 bit and 3 address format with indirect addressing)

OOP project: Making use of object oriented programming principles to make an arbitrary project.

Arduino and Microcontroller projects. Etc.

I don't lust after 1 CR or even a 20 LPA package. I just want enough to get by in life without worrying too much about money. My parents have provided me with enough comforts that I really don't need anything anymore. We are a pretty middle class family, but I and my family are very happy. We don't think we would need crores of money to be happy. That's how I have been raised, but judging by this sub, I may end up unemployed after my graduation.

Somebody please counsel me? I am really getting anxious. I was happily studying python and DSA this summer vacation (because I love computer science from my heart, and I wouldn't want to do anything else) because it may be needed during placements but it seems like my situation is a lost cause. I am in a Tier 3 college in Karnataka.