First of all, life is not a race. I know some people who have been very successful, and lots of people who have been successful in their own way. As far as I know, none of them have taken the shortest or most direct path to become successful. Instead, people try a bit of this and a bit of that. Eventually we find the right path for us.
I think that I saw an earlier post from you asking about whether a 3.2 GPA is sufficient to transfer to a “prestigious” university such as UC Berkeley or UCLA. I do not think that I responded at the time. Several things come to mind. One is just no, a 3.2 GPA is not likely to get you into these two schools. The second thing that comes to mind is that there really is no need to attend a university on the level of UC Berkeley or UCLA. The vast majority of people either attend a different (and lower ranked) university, or do not attend university at all. The vast majority of people do just fine anyway.
I am not sure what you mean by a “lackluster college”. There are at least many hundreds and perhaps more like thousands of very good colleges and universities. Every one of these schools helps many students find their own path in life.
Let me give you an example that is important to me. A number of years ago I had a heart attack when I happened to be close to a university that is ranked somewhere lower than 100 in the US. I was rushed to the emergency room at a nearby hospital (actually to the cardiac catheter facility). Very rapidly they figured out the problem and inserted one stent, stopped the heart attack, checked that everything else was fine, and then showed me a really cool video of how my heart had been pumping both before and after they put in the stent (it was a lot better after). Then I got to spend two days being helped by nurses and other medical professionals, many of whom had graduated from that local university. It did not matter than they graduated from a “lackluster university”. What mattered was that they were helping patients, in my case in a very important way (I was later told that there is no remaining damage at all from the heart attack).
Suppose that you graduate from a school ranked in the 100 to 200 range, and then help to save someone’s life, and do it so rapidly and efficiently that they end up with no long term damage at all. Will your patients care that you graduated from a school ranked lower than 100? Instead, do your patients care that they come through this feeling strong, and breeze through cardiac rehab and get better? Something similar could be said for a civil engineer who helps design a home owner’s new septic system after the old one failed, or an IT specialist who fixes a laptop problem, or a dental assistant who helps a dentist fix a sore tooth, or any one of millions of professionals who help people in other ways.
And a few years back I had a problem with my well. The guy who helped me out probably had never attended university. He still had a solid career and was a huge help to me personally.
The last thing that occurs to me is that if you give us more information then we can give you more useful information.
And if you didn’t get accepted to any universities that you applied to, then you might not have applied to the right universities. With more information we can suggest other schools for you to consider, or you can talk to the transfer advisors at your community college and see what they suggest.
And having something go wrong is indeed “normal” for all of us. We learn from this and do better next time.