I look back fondly on all the times I learned a new technology in 3 weeks.

I bet the writers assumed that is enough. SciFi is so fucking bad at things like that. They always represent the tech people as extreme experts that can grasp all the concepts and deep details of every field outside of medicine. Humans will never be that smart without some kind of enhancement.
I really think the false representation of scientists in sci-fi is a driver of anti science sentiments. Morons think it is all trivial because people like LaForge/Obrien, etc and their analogs in other popular shows like the Flash, Stargate, etc can whip up a technological solution to a seemingly impossible problem in 10 minutes. To the fool who can't understand the difference between TV and reality this cheapens major advancements like the Covid vaccines which took hundreds and hundreds of people to develop, test, plan for roll out, etc. They probably think that was all done by Fauci in 10 minutes which is why they shit on it instead of valuing the hard work of thousands of people over months. A modern computer chip takes 100s of people to design it and many more to develop the manufacturing processes. All in all it takes 1000s of people with PhD.s several years of work.
3 weeks is not enough time to learn how to operate a very complex piece of equipment at an expert level which is what would be required to man something like a starship. It takes much longer to understand the science behind it all. It's par for the course, but it is absolutely absurd.