So many of the ideas I had about design, a career, my place in the world, have been completely flipped on their head lately. I wanted to write myself a letter, as a means to process some of the thoughts I'm having.

First things first, therapy is an awesome thing that people do when they take learning and improvement seriously and want to improve themselves. It's not an admission that there's something wrong with you. Everyone has things to work on. There's just people who are motivated to do that work and people that aren't. It won't slow down your work, it will speed it up. You will have better job security because interpersonal skills are worth more than RISD would let on. Therapy is the closest thing to the hyperbolic time chamber (dragon ball Z for the unfamiliar) in real life.

You're not wrong about everything though. Here are a few things you got right:
1) ID makes you do too many group projects. You got enough group project experience through internships, clubs, and being an RA.
2) It's not stupid that you're so interested in prototyping. It's a part of design. It's just not common yet in design school. It's not better than the folks who focus on form and visuals, but it's not "not design" like that guy in senior studio said. The guy who told you that you should spend less time prototyping for senior studio was wrong. The experience of ramming your head against the wall trying to learn how to read documentation was time well spent. You will eventually get a great work opportunity because of this inclination so don't feel ashamed of it.
3) Learning some graphic design was a smart idea. Same with the student organizations. Neither of those skills will pay off immediately, but they will pay off a ton in ~2 years after graduating.

Okay now back to some things that don't make you look good.

The goal of critique is not to uncover the most criticism possible. That kind of criticism mindset would be helpful if you were analyzing the safety of a spaceship, but that's not what you are doing in design. The goal of critique is to enable progress on the work. Yes, that means that if the audience of your critique only has the emotional capacity for 1 or 2 surface-level critiques, the most effective critique will be pointing out 1 or 2 small things. Furthermore, your critiques aren't always right. So if you're very bummed you can't say every critique that comes to mind, remind yourself you might be wrong about it anyway. As an experiment, in your next critique, write all your critiques down in a notebook and don't say any of them. The next day, look them over, do you still feel like they are all worth bringing up? Recognize which ones don't make the cut. Keep those kinds of critiques to yourself unless they are asked for.

Okay, now here is something to make you feel better. The performance review system is fucked up and traumatizing. Sometimes it is better to focus on your strengths than try to patch up your weaknesses, provided you are at least aware of your weaknesses. A weakness in one context can be a strength in another context. A system that's designed to mitigate weaknesses is not the same as a system designed to uplift strengths. The feedback you receive is all right - so listen to it. Just contextualize it that receiving a harsh performance review is legitimately traumatizing when your ability to survive capitalism is tied to it. It will take some time to heal and get over it and that's completely normal and fine.

Okay now some more critical things. Your idea of success is rooted in white supremacy and the patriarchy. Look at the art history classes. Instead of taking a class on robotics and science fiction, take a class on women's studies and a class about race, and prioritize them over your studios because honestly they are more important. It is scary because you will definitely fuck up and look like an ignorant ass a few times, but it is cowardice to not go learn those things for that reason. It will probably also make you a better designer, but that's not why you should do it. It's easier for me to say now that I have a job, but it's more important to be a good person than to be a good designer.

Now some simple advice that will take less mental energy to practice:
1) Give your teammates credit for all the stuff they did in your portfolio. It's doesn't make you look bad. It makes you look good. Don't worry you're not a bad person for not knowing the answer, the whole job search thing is complicated and no one tells you the rules so don't overthink it. Just put in the credits.
2) Look up people who have jobs you want and look at what they did before on linkedIn. It won't be identical to your path, and you shouldn't try to copy others, but it can have some similarities and you will feel less flustered.
3) Spend more time on your website thumbnails. They are legit like the #1 most important thing in your portfolio. Ideally, people would just grasp the energy of your projects spiritually through the computer, but that's not possible, so you need good thumbnails. A crappy thumbnail gives the impression of a crappy project. Also no logos for thumbnails unless you are a logo designer. You still break this rule today, sigh.