Firsttime Poster Needs Help with Paragraph

This is the beginning of my paragraph: "I was the kid who thought his chances of becoming a marine biologist were somehow aided by family trips to the beach and studying books."

My first question: Should it be "were" or "would be?" I'm leaning towards "would be."

I want the next sentence to be something like this: "I don't think they were" or "I doubt very much that/if they were"

Or: "If they were, they obviously weren't by much."

But all of those options are obviously very clunky and sound horrible.

The last sentence should be something along the lines of: "But I nonetheless/nevertheless/synonym still have all that information in my head."

I feel like the "nevertheless" spot might be out of place or used wrong or something?

Thank you. I wanted this to be 1 post because I know ahead of time I'd just have another question afterwards. Thank you.