I’ve spent 5 minutes trying to work out what this image is of, without luck.
Mondoshawan key sticking out of its fingertip after its hand is crushed in a door, from the movie The Fifth Element
That someone better is you. Research is always like that. If you started your project with all the knowledge you gained from doing it, it would only take you two weeks, sure, but the whole point of research is gaining that knowledge and teaching it to other people.
Also don’t forget that you may not even be good enough to have impostor syndrome
Academia only really rewards novelty, but the scientific method is supposed to be a slow slog towards the truth with lots of redundancy and endless cycles of minor tweaks that in turn force you to tweak theories that connect so that our picture of the world maintains its internal coherence
As somebody with just a bachelor’s degree: getting it done in 4 years is still extremely impressive and I’m proud of you stranger
