The closest I ever got to disputing a grade was in high school. It was English, I think it was grade 10. It wasn't a grade dispute, it was my flat refusal to write an autobiography (at that age - why bother?) on privacy grounds. I was not about to pimp my private life for a grade. I had plenty of things about my life I wasn't about to tell anyone, let alone let the teacher and the class read. I would have wound up surrounded by counsellors so fast my head would have spun.

Leaving out these things would have left large, gaping holes in my autobiography, too. Holes with shapes you could discern and make a damn decent guess at what was in those spots. There was no point in writing an expurgated version to try and score some grades - it would have been a disjointed, fragmented mess.

The teacher and I got in such a stir-up over it, he wouldn't even give me an alternate assignment. I could write the autobiography or take an F. I did the latter. My grade plummeted, as it was a major assignment for that semester. I was used to honours As and high Bs in English up until then. I was in shock from the low grade. Hindsight says I should have tried going over his head, but doing that in high school was an alien concept to me.

I'm pretty sure I didn't take honours English the next year because of that. It might have been the beginning of my disillusionment of the educational system at that time. I sort of gave up any real effort and just coasted once I realized I could get screwed simply for standing up for myself. I almost coasted myself out of graduating. Strange how these things happen.

The world (or to the point, the assholes of the world) will knock you down for doing the right things sometimes, or for standing up for yourself, your beliefs, or your rights. You just can't let it beat you down into giving up when that happens. My last job showed me it can happen more than once in a lifetime and in different ways. It's just a fact of life. A shitty fact, to be sure.

/Ramble off