Why do the hard assays and deviations still throw me off?

You can do most of the job now. That is true, and it is not nothing. But the complex assays and the deviations — the parts that matter most when something goes wrong — still catch you off guard. You already know this. You have probably been telling yourself you just need more time. More time will not fix it by itself. What fixes it is running the hard cases on purpose, instead of waiting for them to land on you by accident. A deviation you have never walked through on purpose will always feel like an emergency the first time it's real. You are not doing this alone — you have a pod. Use them. Let them watch you run the assay you dread. Let them see where you hesitate before an auditor does. That is what the team is for.