Congrats too.
After a while, you brain becomes more adept at picking out salient details from the crackling and distortion of VHF comms.
Agree. I remember reading some research that pilots eventually become proficient at picking up the meaning of transmissions that are 50% distorted and are run at 150% (or even 200%) of normal conversational pace.
But... The prerequisite for that is that you know what to expect in at least 90% of the cases. What helped me a lot when I was a student was just spending hours listening to R/T. I bought a scanner so I could only pick up my local airfield (which happens to be Schiphol, so there was plenty to listen to anyway) but these days you can get virtually every frequency from virtually every airfield, from the smallest grass strip to the largest international airport, via the internet. Just google for "Live ATC".
What helped me most was not to turn a frequency on, and listen to it as background noise, like you would do with a radio, but to actually sit down and listen, with a piece of paper in front of me where I would write down callsigns, circuit positions and everything. I then did the same exercise, but without the pen and paper. Until I was able to draw a mental picture of where everyone was in the sky. With that kind of situational awareness you can predict all R/T calls before they're being made. And that helps tremendously in understanding garbled transmissions.