With peace, love and rebellion, there's nothing you can't imagine.

I managed to maintain a distinction average in school.
And that isn't easy when you have a job like mine.
And then I got a 56% (Pass) for one of my last modules.
When 60% of that is based on groupwork, and my friends all did much better than me.
This dragged down my whole average.
I appealed, it fell through.
I settled.

After some deliberation, I appealed again (thanks to my family).
They refused, saying it was after the deadline for appeals.
I argued that I'd appealed within the given time, this was a follow-up.
They had to concede.

They said I didn't have one valid reason to appeal.
I gave them five.
They said they had full and total confidence in the system, in the lecturer who almost failed me.
I didn't.
They checked with the lecturer and he stood by his decision, and they stood by him, and I said bollocks.

I sent them my student rights (thanks to my wife).
They couldn't argue with that.
Out of options, they said they'd get a panel together to review my paper.
Score! i thought.
Foiled again - they said that the panel was made up of PhD-holding directors.
Then they said that I'd have to accept the new mark, whatever it would be, and that I could quite possibly fail, and did I still want a reassessment?

If I fail, I can't graduate.
If I can't graduate, I've wasted $13,000.
If I want to graduate, I'd then have to repeat the module under the very man I brought this up against.
I'd have to cancel my travel plans.
We'd have to pay another $3000, at least. I wouldn't graduate with my friends.
And my whole year would be screwed up.
And this whole year and the plans I have mean everything to me.
I really didn't think it would get this serious.

Their plan, however, failed.
Well, thanks, I said. Can't wait to get the new results!
(Don't be fooled, I was scared as hell.)
I asked 2 lecturers to back me up if necessary.
one said no (there's fear in the world)
one said yes (there's hope in the world).

A month passed.
Every day I wondered if I could graduate.
(Can I look in faces that I meet? Can I get my punk-ass off the street? Can I graduate?!??)

And then came an answer:

After a review of grades by a panel it has been decided to amend your result for Module 1234 (N*** S******) [from a pass] to a credit. I hope this outcome is satisfactory to you.

Best Wishes,
*****

No apology.
No explanation.
No distinction (which I was secretly hoping for and thought I deserved).
Nothing.

But oh, what a magic feeling. I won!
Anyway, what you don't say is often more telling than what you DO say..

A summary:

Okay, so I still lost my distinction average. But I took on a huge educational organisation, put everything on the line, with everything to lose.

I'd rather have fought and lost then never fought and never known.

After all that, the grades don't matter at all - it's the principle behind it that does.
And I won.
And OH what a feeling!
You know what I think?
I think that Joe Strummer is in his Rebel's Woods in heaven,
proud as hell that I risked everything to challenge a fasc.. sorry, I mean fastidious system, and I won.
Because he'd have done the same.

Maybe that's just my own overactive mind.
But that thought - and the successful fight - that's worth more than all the distinctions in the world.