For my portraiture class in community college, a minimum of one assignment was required to be taken with a 4x5. I paired up with a fellow student, and we muddled through with photos of each other.
When I got my chrome back from the lab, the "fuse was lit".
My next semester, I had a "Commercial Photography" class...(same instructor) and conveniently, a good friend of mine had just inherited his grandfather's Ansco 5x7.
I shot my first assignment for the Commercial class on 5x7 Ektachrome 64 and left my classmates in the dust.
I traded my Nikkormat FT3 for a Calumet CC-400 at a camera swap, got a great deal on a used 210mm f/6.1 Xenar, and off I went.