Can we talk about Smite, and Jungle?

This post is 100% inspired by a game I just played as Zac in the jungle, where I forgot to take smite. I'm a support player who got autofilled jungle and you know what, I forgot to change it. Let me tell you, it was not good, not good at all. Every camp was able to kill me without the assistance of my team mates. By 7 minutes I had been able to successfully kill my red once and my blue once, but I was still level 1. By 12 minutes I'd hit level 2 and when the game ended with our 5 man surrender vote at 17 minutes I had climbed to level 7, gotten one kill, and had a bami's cinder and a bramble vest (because for the love of god I needed that area damage for the camps).

Now yes, there are things I could have done better looking back on it, leeched xp from a lane, or maybe made something happen level 1 and picked up a kill. I was even told in game that it would have been better if I had just left the game, dodge, take the penalty, let them remake and you know I had to agree with him, but by that time it was already too late.

There were a number of compounding factors that lead to my abysmal performance that game, the lead of them i believe is the bonus xp that junglers usually receive from having smite and their item, they can hit level 2 off the first buff, move on to another camp with 2 abilities and clear it much much easier. The second was the lack of DoT and healing from the jungle item which I was unable to buy since it requires the smite summoner spell.

I know, yes, I'm awful and I should git gud. But aside from me being garbage, I think it's ridiculous that the success or failure of a role relies so entirely on having a specific summoner spell. It would be like saying that toplane simply cannot succeed without having teleport, or that in order to win mid you absolutely must take the arcane comet rune. I'm not trying to make excuses for how that game turned out, but I would love to see junglers at least have the option to take a summoner spell other than smite. Having it be so essential seems to me that it's overly restrictive in playstyle, and far-FAR too punishing to the occasional person who forgets to swap.