'Kay, so, I'm a lazy-ass person. I'm lucky that in school, I never had to do any work to attain awesome grades. I had a really good relationship with all my teachers and they eventually sorta realised that if they left me to do my own thing, I'd do well, so I never got in much trouble for not doing homework and stuff.
The exception was this one physics teacher of mine. Publicly stated he hated me in front of the class, told me and my parents I didn't deserve my grades, and so on. Really had it out for me. And this guy was the one in charge of the experimental investigations part of my final year.
See, technically it was a part of the marking criteria that you work on the project consistently throughout the year, to discourage people from just doing it all quickly in the last week. Now, tonnes of people didn't do this, but I had somewhat of a reputation and this teacher knew I hadn't been doing jack shit on it all year. The marking of the report was external, as is the marking for all exams in my country. The one exception is this little part of the marking criteria, which obviously has to be done by your school.
I procrastinated as usual, and literally did the year-long project in a single week. And this teacher seized the chance to fuck me over. There's other drama involved in all this, but that's pretty much what it boiled down to. He was infamous for playing favourites, and tried to get members of the class to rat out a friend of mine who the teacher suspected "wasn't working consistently enough". Srsly, this guy was McCarthy reincarnated - this was the one aspect he had total control over and none of the other faculty had any say in.
He tried to fail me off of the course. By just not ticking that box, he could automatically fail me on 20% of my final grade, and that I hadn't completed that aspect would show on my exam certificate and would be told to the uni I had an offer from... an offer that depended on getting certain grades in my final exam.
It was bad. I barely slept for weeks and I felt sick all the time. I'm actually studying Theoretical Physics, so him doing this would have basically barred me from going to uni. He told me he was doing it because I didn't deserve to go to uni because I didn't work hard enough.
Luckily, I have a pretty nimble tongue when I need one, and as I said I had a good relationship with the faculty even though they all found me frustrating as fuck because of the lack or work/uniform/whatever. My one hope was to talk them onto my side, as slim a chance as it was, and I did it. I honestly bless them to this day for it, they knew they were doing me a favour. They spoke to him, and though I don't know what was said, he dropped the charges, so to speak. He ticked that little box, and the report was sent off.
He'd told me it was a shit report and I'd only get 10% on it, tops, and it was a waste to send it. Basically told me to give up. I said I wanted to send it anyway 'cause 10% was better than 0%. I believed him, though, considering I'd done it in a week.
Ended up with 84%, second highest mark for the investigation in my school. Went on to get 92% overall, tied highest in the school.
And I got into the second fucking best uni in the world, to study that subject. Along with the person who got the top mark in the project and drew with me overall, although they study something else.
Oh man, I felt fucking vindicated. It was glorious. Biggest trouble I've ever been in, and my luck just about held out. Swore I'd never put myself in that position again, and, of course, promptly began to procrastinate at every opportunity once I got to uni. Speaking of which, I have a report due tomorrow TODAY IN 10 HOURS HOLY SHIT, which I've done in three days instead of three weeks... shiiiiitttt.
