And?
Stop putting yourself in a “junior engineer” bucket. There is no eureka moment on the horizon that will suddenly make you into the N+1 developer that’s capable of solving problems without help. This is it, this is who you are. There is no good reason that a junior engineer with zero experience can’t perform better than a senior engineer with 10 YoE on any given problem. The difference is what expectations there are. If you’re good, the expectations of others pale in comparison to the expectations that you’ll set for yourself.
Honestly, it sounds like you are having trouble transitioning from the school model of contrived problems with an ideal imagined solution to the real world where things are far more ambiguous and you need to use judgement. I hated school and did okay at it, but I do well at real work, and I have very little to say other than that you need to stop trying to game the system and you need to start thinking about solving actual problems. Homework is to jiras what a wrench is to a horse.
Are you working hard enough? How often are you checking out at 5pm? Are you productive while you’re on the clock?
Your manager deserves some blame for not keeping you on track but honestly to me it sounds like you’re
1.) yearning for clean tasks with prescribed solutions to be implemented, and it doesn’t work that way.
2.) not working hard enough
3.) not using general judgment about whether the changes you’re submitting are going to accomplish what they’re supposed to accomplish.