Vent: my photo teacher said stop chasing grain, and I think he is wrong

I take a night class at the community college here in Akron, and last Thursday my instructor, a guy who shot for a paper for 25 years, looked at my prints and said I should stop chasing grain and just shoot clean. He said grain is a crutch and that a good photo does not need it. I sat with that for a few days and I still think he is wrong. Some of my best shots, the ones of the diner on Market Street at 11pm, only work because the grain softens the neon and the wet sidewalk. When I printed the same frame on Delta 100 instead of pushing HP5 to 1600, it looked flat and kind of dead to me. I get that he grew up printing news photos where clean was the job, but grain is not a mistake to me, it is part of how the scene actually felt. Curious if anyone here has had a teacher or a lab person push them off a look they loved, and did you stick with your gut or switch?