Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean (Studies),
I am appealing for credit standing in my first year courses of BIOL 102 (Fall 2014), BIOL 103 (Winter 2015), PHYS117 (Fall-Winter 2015), CHEM112 (Fall-Winter 2015) and PSYC100 (Fall-Winter).
Beginning in the first week of September 2014, I became very ill with various types of sicknesses that caused me to perform terribly in my academics for the entirety of first semester. It started with intestinal issues that stopped me from participating in multiple aspects of Frosh Week, and I seeked medical attention from the hospital for help. These problems made it difficult for me to go to class most of the first month of school because I was in too much pain and experienced nausea, and although I would force myself to leave my room for mandatory portions of courses such as labs, I would have to go back to residence afterwards to lie down because I felt too sick to continue to my other classes, and often needed to stay close to a washroom for emergencies. After being prescribed medication for my intestinal problems, I started to feel well enough to attend the classes I usually missed. Furthermore, in October I began to experience terrible throat pain as well as allergy symptoms, which caused me to seek medication attention again. I started missing classes again because I had such bad symptoms that I was unable to eat at times, leading to a serious lack of energy. I also had to rely on taking cold tablets each morning and night to try to function normally, and due to the side effects I was often too drowsy from the night medication to get up and attend my classes. While this was happening, I did attempt to keep up at least some of my work by doing readings in my bed and watching the online lecture videos that certain courses uploaded. Over the past few years I have developed very serious anxiety, and this also made the entire experience so much more difficult because I would have frequent panic attacks about how far behind I was falling, which would drain me even more and make it nearly impossible to focus. I began to gain weight from not being able to exercise regularly, which caused me to relapse into a state of depression, which made it hard to want to get up and face each day, and made me tired from minor exertions, such as going to the cafeteria and talking to people. I regularly struggled with sleep at night from panic and began to frequently nap throughout the day, when the depression and exhaustion settled in. After visiting the hospital and the doctor, I still could not find any relief from my throat and sinus symptoms until they gradually became less intense on their own mid-November. After this time, I still had slight symptoms but was able to get myself to my classes regularly again. I wanted to contact my professors or TAs about how sick I had been, but because most of the terrible things I experienced were on my own outside of medical help and class, I was afraid that they wouldn't believe me and think I was making excuses for being lazy. I felt my symptoms really start to leave around the beginning of December as exams approached. Although I wasn't as physically ill anymore, the psychological toll of the whole experience made studying for exams very demanding. I had frequent panic attacks and at times had to resort to my emergency anxiety medication to calm down and sleep. I struggle with severe test anxiety, and although I have been working on controlling it, the added stress from everything I experienced in the previous months made it impossible. I did manage to complete all my exams, but the final results were very poor. After recovering and making sure I had all my medications renewed in case the same thing happened when I returned to school, I started the Winter 2015 semester with the intent of working hard to overcome the damages made to my academics with my illnesses. Unfortunately, although I worked as best as I could I soon realized I had dug myself into too much of a hole to fix, and my final marks were dis-satisfactory. I had difficulty with my second semester exams as well because I realized that the marks I attained had a direct impact on if I would be able to enter the program/degree plan I wanted, which in turn caused me to have reoccurring panic attacks in the way I did the previous semester. I was so overwhelmed with the stress I experienced that I spent the days after my exams in bed trying to recuperate.
Should my appeal be granted, I have planned on how to achieve academic success in the following years. I will attend regular medical checkups to make sure if I do become ill it won't manifest into something severe. I have contacted an anxiety clinic in my hometown to get some advice and learn some coping mechanisms to deal with my anxiety should I encounter periods of intense stress similar to the previous year, and most importantly I will contact my professor or TAs if I'm having difficulty, regardless of the circumstances. I plan to pursue a Psychology major with a Life Science general, and I believe that if I take all these steps to being successful, I will be able to achieve this goal.