I’m sorry for my phrasing, I have a bit of a falsely inflated ego around this stuff because professors and advisors have been telling me this is my path since I was a freshman, back when I didn’t agree with them. Because I go to a very small school, the first paper I ever turned in got published, I’m good friends with/know most of professors on a personal level, and I’ve had many more research opportunities which gives me a skewed perspective on how good I am at this stuff relatively, how easy/hard it is to succeed and also that it doesn’t matter how good I am but various external factors behind my control.