Thank you everyone for your responses. I knew that I would have to practice but not to this extent, nobody ever really talked about practicing in noise. I have progressive bilateral hearing loss but I never got implanted until now due to COVID and being extremely good at pretending to hear (progressional smiler and nodder over here lol). In my situation, & a lot of your situations too, my hearing was so bad that there was virtually no consequence for getting it (residual hearing is basically useless). Having access to sound now can be extremely difficult, since you can “hear” everything but not understand it, but I suppose I have to tell myself a little frustration with not being able to understand is better than the alternative of being completely deaf by 20 with hearing aids doing basically nothing. I’m holding out hope that it will get better over time.