The part about arguing with her for 5 minutes really hits home. I did the same thing with my pour over setup, swore up and down that finer grinds gave me more flavor, and honestly I was just drinking bitter sludge for years and calling it bold. What finally made it click for me was learning that your grind and your brew time have to match. French press soaks the grounds for 4 minutes, so a fine grind just keeps steeping and over-extracting the whole time. Coarse grounds let the water flow through and pull out the good stuff without dragging all the bitter junk with it. Once I got that in my head I stopped thinking finer equals stronger and started thinking match the grind to the method. Blew my mind that nobody told me this sooner, and I worked in a cafe in college.

Oh man, three months sounds about right! My first point was supposed to be a quick afternoon thing too and I think I went through a whole bucket of broke rocks before one survived (my garage still has the shrapnel to prove it). Something about slowing down and actually thinking about each hit instead of just smashing is the whole game, and getting that nod from a real archaeologist is huge, congrats!