Published a solo author paper in my third Semester as a PhD student, but am now embarrassed by it.
What I mean in the title is that the classes I have taken since publication have made me realize I did so many things wrong. Basically, I committed every statistical mistake that my OG 75-year-old stats and methodology professor taught this past semester. He discussed the issues with null hypothesis significance testing in the era of computers, particularly "tabular asterisks" instead of planned contrasts and theoretical risks. I had to categorize rather than use raw frequency because the distribution was heavily skewed. In the class, he discussed that categorization results rely on arbitrary cutoffs and should be avoided at all costs. He said stepwise regression should be avoided entirely (my next paper utilizes this method). I was ecstatic about this publication milestone until I realized how weak my methods were. I'm embarrassed at my own work (not my argument/setup/idea), but how poorly it was executed. Half of his class, I was sinking into my seat, and was humbled quickly about how little I actually know. He is trying to push for more rigor in psychological science, and I basically fell into every mistake he discussed that has held the field back.