Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing my mark, a D-, in Introduction to Spanish taught by Monica Chamberlain. There have been a few extenuating circumstances that occurred during the majority of first semester that was very challenging and directly affected my academic performance in this class. During the first semester, specifically at the beginning of October, my boyfriend of one year, Robbie Lenders, father, had a stroke. This scary time in his life not only affected his family, but mine. We have an extremely close relationship starting with friendship and a bond that I felt like it was my job to help him go through whatever he was feeling, while going through my own feelings of disbelief and heartache (I am also very close with his father). This was also the time around of the first test. From staying up late to console him, to actually going to his house and helping with whatever I could during the weekends, my grade on this test came to be very low (below a pass). After this test worth 15, I realized how much memorization and time had to be put into this course and I had to put more effort into the next one. However, despite my best efforts in trying to balance my time wisely with this course, my other courses, and what was going on, I could not because of new news involving Robbie¿¿s father. Right before the second test (also worth 15) Robbie got news that doctors had found lumps on his fathers¿¿ liver and kidneys. This second shock was so much of a surprise that I could not successfully do the test and received an even lower grade on the second one. The last written evaluation we had for the class was the final exam worth 30. Two weeks before I had to write the exam, we found out that the lumps on his liver and kidneys were not benign and actually cancerous. This news made it almost impossible to study more than an hour a day while balancing other courses and such news. This meant that 60 of my work in this course was below a pass. The reason why it affected solely this course and not my other ones, was because this was my only course that involved solely memorization that equated to a lot more dedication then the rest of my courses (Political Studies, Global Development, Sociology, Gender Studies). The rest of these courses are essay based and I used prior knowledge, and managed to just finish the essays on time in order to maintain the grades that can be shown. However, Spanish did suffer through this process as would any course of this magnitude at that time in my life. Today, Robbie¿¿s father is wearing a heart monitor and continues to go to work living with this illness. I continue to support him and have discovered new ways to balance my work and make sure it is completed on time. I would request that you acknowledge me if you wish to make contact with Robbie, as I specifically do not like to associate my poor academia with what has happened, because I would never want him to think it his fault.
Thank you for your consideration and I wish to hear from you soon.