How cheaters saved my school degree
This is how I almost failed to obtain my Abitur because of my lack of fitness, and how incompetent cheaters saved me.
To understand how this came about, you need a bit of context. The first thing to understand is a quirk in the grading system of the state I was living in: If you somehow managed to get the worst possible grades, 0 points (out of 15), not only would you fail the class (obviously), but the class would also not count as completed. With 1 to 4 points, you would fail the class, but it would count as completed, with 0 points, you would fail and it would not count as completed.
To actually receive your Abitur, not only do you need to have certain grades, you also need to complete a couple of courses (not all of them successfully, though). I bet you start to see where this is going.
The last semester of school is traditionally very short, and gym class was on a Thursday, with Thursdays being the day with most of fixed public holidays, so there really weren't many gym classes to attend. And what can I say, sometimes I was sick, and sometimes I was "sick", so my teacher was unable to grade me, and half a dozen others.
Apparently, this was a frequent enough thing, as the teacher had a backup plan: Run around the local lake .[1] He had a timetable, and you would get the grade based on your speed.
So I ran. With absolutely no prior preparation, weighing around 120kg [2] at the time, but all dressed in my best sports gear and with my shiny iPod, to motivate me with sweet beats.
Holy shit, how it hurt. I started off too fast, got side stitches almost immediately, and to add insult to injury, my iPod apparently wasn't as shock-resistant as I thought, and the sweet beats turned into an early form of Dubstep. Desperately, I did the wrong thing: instead of slowing down until the stitches went away, I tried running as much as possible, but I was literally painfully slow.
A group of others who were running with me were smarter: They hid bikes somewhere in the bushes after the first bend and cycled around the lake. To not arrive suspiciously fast, they hid their bikes before the final bend and sat down for a smoke.[3]
Their plan worked beautifully. It only had one flaw: They misjudged the time in which they realistically should arrive at the goal and passed the finish line close to when I did.
Our finishing time wasn't even on the list, meaning zero points, meaning not completed, so no degree. The teacher was desperate. Failing that many people and forcing them to re-take an entire year because of an unimportant class like gym class was clearly something he was very uncomfortable with. Yet, ignoring his trusty table and yolo'ing our grades was obviously also something he didn't want to do.
After some deliberation, he decided to award us with a few points. Enough to ensure the class was counted as completed, not enough to make us pass. I guess I was just lucky the others failed to cheat, otherwise I'm not sure the teacher would have been merciful.[4]
The distance is 2,5 km per lap. I can't remember how many laps we were supposed to do. My guess is 2 laps, so 5k. ↩︎
Around 260 lbs. ↩︎
I can't remember exactly how they managed to avoid being detected as they had to pass the teacher on each lap, but I do remember them explaining it to me afterwards. ↩︎
Ever since, I wonder if he knew. I mean, it must have been obvious that besides the fat, panting, sweaty kid in front of him, the other kids were neither panting nor soaked through. Also I dimly remember the scent of cigarette smoke. Then again, I was busy with not collapsing and didn't really pay attention to anything besides the final grade. ↩︎
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