[DanaC]

You are in the kind of job at the kind of level you are at, because of a number of reasons, none of which involve any kind of suckage whatsoever.

I'll throw in a few suggestions as to possible reasons, based on what I have learned of you over the years.

1. You are drawn to an employment environment where you are actually able to, in whatever small way, make life a bit easier for someone who would otherwise struggle (such as students who need help financing their studies).
2. You are not a bitch. You are not equipped to play the bitchy, bitey, organisation-be-damned self-serving, stamp the fingers on the rung below arseholery needed to be a [quote] success [/unquote] in the kind of organisation you are in.
3. You took a little while to figure out what sort of things actually matter to you and make you happy, because you didn't fit an arbitrarily defined set of dimensions for 'success'.

and 4. You give a shit. And it's hard to just keep quiet and carry on when you see arseholes breaking the fabric of the organisation with their petty fiefdom biulding and managerial incompetence. This means you don't generally get the arsehole managers on your side.

None of that reflects badly on you.