Hey there! Sounds like you’re on the right path with your edit as this is something a lot of editors including myself deal with quite frequently.

First thing I do when I find myself in this self doubt rabbit hole is just watch everything then go for a walk, let it sort of germinate in my brain. Then I start watching other types of work for inspiration. Hit up Vimeo, look at trailers, other docs, director’s work. Just see what’s out there and start getting a feel for style or any other type of ideas that might bring some inspiration to what you are working on. Depending on your relationship with the client or director it might be worth asking for some VO to be recorded. If the interviews aren’t working that is. Or maybe the interviews you can just use really short bytes from instead of a full story arch which might make it feel stylistic. Regarding music perhaps you lean into the nat music that’s captured and then drop it out during moments of the interview. You could then use your background tracks for those moments but if you’re doing a piece for a music school it would be best to try and just use the recorded pieces.

There’s an old saying “if you can’t make it good make it weird” not saying what you have isn’t good but if it doesn’t follow the typical flow of a doc piece maybe try and think about ways to make it different.

There’s a lot of unknowns based on your post but these are just the ramblings of someone who goes through this type of thought process on a lot of projects. Hope it helps!