You’re either talking from a place where you’re taking every skill for granted or have no clue at all. I didn’t say anyone will spoon feed how to learn, you jus

You’re either talking from a place where you’re taking every skill for granted or have no clue at all. I didn’t say anyone will spoon feed how to learn, you just have to figure it out yourself. But the PhD is precisely the time to do that, with occasional nudging from your mentor. I didn’t even have a great mentor and he still spent hours advising me on what I need to improve. If you didn’t get anything like that from your mentors I feel sorry for you. Unless you’re working next to Terrance Tao, I.e., at the top of whatever game you’re supposed to be in, you clearly haven’t pushed yourself to be better. Of course that’s a choice to begin with if you want to even do it. But given that you do, a PhD should have been the time when you got better at everything no matter where you started. If you already started with amazing skills then you should have become world class at it by now. If you did a good PhD that is. In your case, if the 3 papers you published were “pedestrian” by your standards, you and your mentors should both have pushed for more ambitious stuff.