I have another take on this. I was abused mentally and physically by my Maths teacher in school. I was a rising star of my school and also won a few quizzes at national level and been on TV and stuff by the time I was 12. I was yet very humble and polite and at no poi y did I antagonize anyone at all with any attitude. And then this bastard who was a fucking sadistic loser threatens all my class mates or most of them who were friends with me to boycott me else fail them or give them lower marks. He instigates an entire class of 40+ students, boys and girls I practically grew up with into abandoning me. That was 8th standard. The next 2 years were total hell for me. No friends. No fucking social life. I wasn't invites to a single birthday party by any of them in class by any one or any group. Worse still, with more instigation they started calling me names now, emboldened at the free hand given by the math teacher who was also the class in charge now.
I was still trying to get their friendship and tried really really hard at winning them back but I didnt succeed to even a percent of it. I didn't know what to do and who to talk this to. My grades started slipping due to this mental agony. As a result I was also kicked out of my badminton school team because the math guy wanted me to attend his "special" classes. Everything went into a free fall. Nothing positive ever happened to me in the last 3 years of my school from classes 8th to 10th. I was in super depression. My class mates whom I trusted stabbed me in the back. I had no kinship or affiliation with my school in what were supposed to be the most beautiful days of one's life. My school failed to recognize my efforts too. Ours was a nothing school really and I put it on the national map really with solely my exploits.
The mental shock was unbearable and took all of 7 more years to muster up things to do. It was a great surprise how I didn't commit suicide! College was gone as a result and I mostly kept to myself.
And college in India really didn't teach me anything. I learnt everything on my own. My own curiosity and never give up attitude combined with some amount of pig headedness gave me the breaks necessary.
The point am trying to make is as long as you are aware of what you are doing and what you want to become, do any fucking thing you ever wanted to do. And hammer down anything that comes in your way. Do not let someone screw the happiness for you. If you want to man it up and take responsibility for your actions and think what you did was part of your life experience so be it. You aren't a loser because of that.
PS: I am still not in contact with anyone of my school mates leave alone class mates.
PS2: I am doing more than decently okay to what I was doing 10 years ago. The money isn't the greatest but I am in a super niche kind of field. But one thing though. Because of whatever happened in my earlier life, my romantic love life never took off nor progressed an inch at all. I was monumentally unlucky. I'd attribute that to just one thing: I did things at 30 that normal people would have done in their lives when they were between 19 and 22. I missed that part of the journey and it still keeps biting me!