P.S. I was at UVa from 1989 to 1993 -- so although one could borrow VHS tapes of Russian movies from the "Slavic Studies Department", or listen to (boring) conversation exercises on audio tape, the convenience of hearing native Russian speakers over the Internet didn't exist!
Didn't your teacher correct you? Do they think in the US that pronunciation is not important in foreign languages?
Did you hear that you pronounce in a wrong way? How did you pronounce soft consonants at the end of the words?
I remember Serbs (there are no ть, дь in Serbian) immediately heard that деньги does not sound like дэньги, they did not even understand that the sound was similar to д. They started repeating the word: дженьги, зеньги... So that's why I was very suprized when people say that the difference is not audible.