I remember a teacher giving a failure mark to a child using "got". There are few times when "got" is needed.
That's just ridiculous, unless the child was 1) at least in secondary school, 2) doing a
formal writing assignment AND 3)
had been taught that "got" is not appropriate in formal writing. I had an overly nitpicky teacher like this in high school, and I learned nothing from her (really, nothing at all, because I already knew my grammar back and forth, and the students who didn't know their grammar could absorb nothing from her rigid teaching style), except how to write the "standard five-paragraph essay" that university instructors don't want to see.
In creative or informal writing (including many instances of professional writing), "got" and its variations are perfectly appropriate because people use it in their thinking and in their everyday speech. There's no need to worry over such formal rules unless you are writing in an academic or formal context (and professional doesn't always mean formal; I'd tone down the formality in an agent query letter, for example, to avoid sounding difficult and snobby. In a legal brief, I'd go for a style manual).
All that said, if certain words sound unpleasant to your ears, simply don't use them. There's nothing wrong with having a personal preference.
