So you basically sat on your ass and said "somebody teach me"? No wonder that
your colleagues from university got so much better.
I never got much help from other people. In the beginning, I didn't have
anybody interested in computers around me at all, yet I managed to learn
programming. Then, when I started studying IT and switched to Linux, and
I didn't have anybody to systematically learn working with unix from. This
happened when I didn't have an access to the internet, and we had very little
learning material published (first half of '00 decade), so it wasn't even
possible for me to ask a question on StackOverflow or something.
And then the pattern repeats a number of times.
It's not mentoring that helps people grow. It's learning. It can be done
with a teacher/mentor (and in fact it's easier in a number of fields), but it
doesn't require one. Don't blame others for your own idleness.
Are you saying it took you 9 years of seeing other people know and learn things you weren't taught at the Uni before you realized you could look things up with Google?
No, I looked many things up and I learned, but it wasn't much and really unstructured.
I just came to work and did what had to be done. After years I learned that there is much more and I don't have to fear things that are outside of my comfort zone.
I started doing it after I was 9 years in.