Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I had an unusual academic event during the Winter 2025 semester in ENGL441: Jane Austen and her Contemporaries. This affected my academic performance on in-class quizzes throughout the semester.

I am a student with academic accommodations through Ventus, which include extra time on assignments, tests, quizzes, midterms, and exams. I also write these tests in an extra room, because I am easily distracted.

The professor announced in class that students with accommodations would need to write the pop quizzes with the rest of the class because he felt the pop-quiz format would be the best and most accurate way to test students' knowledge of the readings. This discussion was had during class time, and because the rest of the class agreed to this format, I felt uncomfortable expressing my concerns. I did not want to cause an inconvenience to everyone else, so I did not address my concerns for fear of it affecting my peers’ learning time and my professor’s teaching style.

It was very difficult for me to write the quiz with everyone else, as I was distracted by how quickly they were finishing. It was very easy to tell when someone was finished because we had to flip our papers over to the blank back page of the test. The fact that it would be very apparent to the rest of the class who had done the test and who was still writing made me super anxious and stressed, so I felt a lot of pressure to finish the test around the same time as everyone else. The tests were always administered at the beginning of class as well, which added pressure to complete the quiz in a timely manner so the professor could start the lecture. I was embarrassed at the thought of everyone else completing their tests and waiting for me to finish mine, so I did my best to avoid that outcome by doing the test quicker than I normally would. If I noticed that most of the class had finished their tests, I would take that as a sign to hurry up, which led me to guess at answers or leave them blank.

I became preoccupied with masking the neurodivergent behaviours that I performed significantly worse in this section of the class compared to other grade areas.

Additionally, extra time was administered to the entire class. While I appreciate the professor's thoughtfulness in allowing extra time, I felt that allowing students who do not need it to finish the quiz gave them an advantage. The purpose of extra time is to provide a balance between those who need it and those who do not. I felt that this might have affected the quality of my work compared to my peers who do not need accommodations.

I recently discussed this matter with my family physician, who encouraged me to submit a petition because my performance on these quizzes was affected.