The goal is to make a negative that you can make a good print out of.(posted 8819 days ago)Zone system is a way to do this under certain conditions with certain subjects.
The more important thing is to shoot a film a lot and figure out how *you* need to expose it to get a good print. Arbitrarily calibrating your film speed, exposure, and/or development to an artificial standard because the gods of photography did it that way will do you no good.
As for making prints, I proof prints at a guessed exposure that is fairly uniform for all negatives. But when I make a print for real, I test strip to get the highlights where I want, and then change the contrast to get the overall look that I want and to get the shadows to the right density. Others work differently. If you work differently, you might find my negatives really hard to print, but I've gotten good at it.
HTH, YMMV.