If you attempted to count to stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3 years to count them all

Counting stars at one per second would take far longer than 3 years. A typical galaxy contains 100-400 billion stars. At one star per second, counting 100 billion stars would take over 3,000 years (100 billion ÷ 31,536,000 seconds/year ≈ 3,171 years). Even the smallest dwarf galaxies have billions of stars. Three years would only count about 94 million stars - a tiny fraction of any galaxy. The statement is false - it would take millennia, not years.