Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Appeal Letter: Hello,
My name is Matteo Ienzi and I am submitting this appeal to waive the credit standing deadline and be able to have these courses looked at.
CHEM 112B, PHYS 117B, and MATH 121B in the winter 2022 term.
BIOL 205, BIOL 212, BIOL 243, and CHEM 281 in the fall 2022 term.
And BIOL 200, and BIOL 206 in the winter 2023 term.
I understand it is unlikely as it has been two-three years after first year, but I wish to speak about troubles in first year anyway as there is no harm in trying and it helps illustrate the position I am coming from, in regards to this appeal.
I am from Ottawa and in first year (2021-22 terms) I was in a new city and did not know many people and the stress of first year made it very difficult especially with Covid-19 causing the exam season in the fall to shift to an online format in a matter of days. That aside, I was experiencing heart problems. When I was younger my heart rate used to spike randomly and make it hard to breath and focus. However, with age it seemed to disappear. In first year, it came back (approx. 2021-08-14), and especially when I ate my stomach would hurt and my heart would race causing my stomach to hurt more which caused my heart to race more in a vicious cycle that could last anywhere from 1-4 hours. This led to me undereating as a result of fear of the ensuing pain and would put me in a position where I was unable to do much until it passed, including school work. This also made me miss a handful of classes as I felt incredibly ill and was once kept awake until 3 am due to these problems.
When consulting my doctor, after numerous tests it was concluded that the most likely cause of this was stress and anxiety. Due to this I am now on an anxiety medication, that I began the week before the winter exams (approx. 2022-04-07) which the side effects of the new medication made me very nauseous and made me very tired making it hard to study for exams.
Because I saw this as a physical issue, I spoke with my doctor regarding it rather than student services.
I would request that now that I am regularly seeking aid and am now aware that I do not need to be held back as a result of my poor health, I be allowed to submit a credit standing request for my courses in first year.
Going forward into second year (2022-2023 terms), I began to experience what I was later informed to be symptoms of depression. These symptoms were largely a general state of apathy, rarely getting out of bed, and skipping hygiene activities. This made my friends very concerned about my well being and they routinely asked me to seek professional help for how I felt, I continually reassured them I thought I was fine. I kept telling myself ‘It could be worse, therefor I am perfectly fine’ while sitting in bed hating myself for missing so many classes. In turn I never sought help.
At one exam I realised I had missed so much of the content from being in this state that I did not even understand much of what I was looking at. After the exam I felt so dejected I walked down to student wellness which was in the same building and booked a walk in meeting where I spoke about my issues and was informed that these were symptoms of depression (approx. 2023-04-20), which no one had ever stated to me before. Upon hearing this I slowly began making moves towards better help.
Unfortunately, this was at the end of the term and I left for summer and did not get a chance to begin this journey. By the time third year came up I was feeling better but was slowly beginning to sink back into my depressive habits. After a particularly harrowing experience, my brother had me seek a crisis counsellor as they had helped him previously. This led to me attaining several meetings with the same counsellor through student wellness. We worked through a lot together and they got me into the prescription exercise program which helped a lot. I am still in regular communication with her and now with my doctor to attain proper diagnosis and professional help. When I had mentioned that I was worried about my grades as a result of these issues, she directed me to an academic advisor, who explained to me the credit standing process and directed me to making this appeal.
During this timeline I also found that when I was in classes it was very hard to focus, and in turn it made it very difficult to learn in these environments. Thanks to the help of my counsellor, I am now in the process of getting tested for mental health issues.
there were some exceptions. I found my drama classes, much easier to participate in. A large sum of them possessed small class sizes, required class participation, and graded attendance, were enough to force me out of bed and to engage with class and learn from it, where as the sciences are much more detached making it much harder to keep up with.
Thank you,
Matteo