Did anyone else meter shadows wrong for years until a random stranger spoke up?

I shot with a Pentax K1000 for about 5 years, always metering for the highlights like every book told me. My prints kept coming out muddy and dark, and I figured it was just my developing skills or the cheap paper. Then at a local camera store in Columbus, an old guy glanced at my negatives and said 'you're exposing for the wrong end, kid'. He explained that with negative film, you want to meter for the shadows because the highlights will fall into place. I switched to spot metering on the shadow side and my next roll of Portra 400 came out like a whole different world. That was 3 years ago and I still feel dumb about it. So here's the debate: do you trust the zone system strictly, or do you just eyeball it and rely on experience? Has anyone else had a similar moment where a single comment flipped your whole workflow upside down, or do you think I was just overthinking it?

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