Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Up until this school year, I have struggled in school due to being undiagnosed with ADHD. This had drastic effects on my grades in school and my ability to effectively do school work throughout all of my undergrad years. In Fall 2024 when I took PSYC301, I had specific personal challenges (death of a family member in early fall) that being untreated for ADHD heavily exacerbated. Because of a lack of ability to motivate myself to go to class or do school work properly, it was difficult to organize the necessary time needed for this course and to put my mind to its demands. In addition, the lack of emotional stability that being treated has provided me made it hard to regulate my thoughts and feelings at the time. This had a particular impact on my grades since I would easily get overwhelmed and experience intense emotions that made it even more difficult to focus and motivate myself. Given the fact that this specific class was out of my realm of knowledge in comparison to the two other courses I took that semester, it was increasingly more difficult to motivate myself to understand its content. Oftentimes I would feel a sense of task paralysis which was when I would feel mentally frozen and unable to start or finish tasks because of how overwhelmed I felt. Since I was more unfamiliar with this type of course, I was a lot more distracted when trying to retain information and understand the sequential process of certain things. I believe that this affected me in every aspect of this course, from simply going to class to my struggles with assignments, the midterm, and final exam.

It was apparent that I was struggling this specific semester since I only took three classes which is not something I have otherwise done in the entirety of my undergrad. This was a step that I took to improve my situation or to at least alleviate some of the pressure. I also went to therapy at this time as well. Being diagnosed would have greatly improved my ability to deal with hardships as they come, and generally be better equipped to do well in school. Since I only got diagnosed in Fall 2025, I did not realize the extent to which this disability was impacting my academics at the time, with a particular emphasis on Fall 2024 and this class.