Ask HN: Do you feel like your potential is being wasted?

Do you feel that what you're currently doing is a waste of your potential, and that if you had the proper opportunities, you could do much greater things? Are you in one of the "thinking about how to make people click ads" jobs, and you hate it? Or that because you have to work (to pay your rent and buy food), that you can't explore bigger and better opportunities (because they'd require a lot of domain expertise or specific knowledge that you don't have time to acquire - after work self-study being insufficient/you're just too exhausted/whatever)?

In my case, I would love to go to a university (Stanford, MIT, Columbia, or other well-respected school) to do an undergrad (had to leave home to work as a teen since my family died young) to just immerse myself in full-time learning rather than working on unexciting web dev work and doing fragmented self-learning in my free time (which is what I've been doing for years, and it's terribly inferior to full-time, uninterrupted learning.) I've saved money, but not nearly enough to go to any of those without going into an incredible amount of debt, which, at nearly 40, seems like a terrible idea. If I hit the startup lottery, I'd use that money to go right back to school.

Those of you who have been able to attend these prestigious schools with the financial and logistical help of parents/relatives (living rent-free while going to school is unbeatable): cherish the amazing gift you have been given. All the grit and persistence in the world does not beat someone else paying for your education, no matter what some people say.

Anyone else wish they had a road with better opportunities available to them?