Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am requesting a Credit Standing (CR) appeal for CHEM 112B, MATH 121B, and BIOL 103. I am a student going into second year of my studies, the courses listed above were taken in the winter semester during first year.

I have been struggling to adjust to the new environment in first semester and just when I thought the rest of the year will go smoothly, severe family issues arose. My parents gave me a phone call informing me that my grandparents were going through significant heart complications. I was brought up by my grandparents from kindergarden to early elementary school before I moved to Canada. I was decently close to both of them and hearing this horrible news made me worry even more since I was unable to see them at the time. Because of other issues happening in the family, my parents, my mother and step father, were going through a difficult phase in their marriage and they constantly brought up the divorce topic. As a child who has already experienced the unpleasant feeling of the splitting of a family once, I was horrified that this was to occur again. Being the oldest child of the family, I thought I was responsible for soothing my younger sister who is only in elementary school as well as giving unbiased suggestions to my parents. My grandparents¿¿ condition became worse once they found out that my parents¿¿ marriage was coming to an end. Having to deal with the emotions of the whole family while trying to maintain a positive attitude led to a dramatic decrease in my academic performance. Since I was too focused on the family issues I was unaware of my own health. I had an extreme disturbance in my sleep schedule, both because of my own emotions and the many long-distance phone calls that had 12 hours of time difference. My appetite decreased and I was only eating one or two meals a day. Coming to the end of the semester, around the middle of March, I began to show symptoms of pain in the abdomen area, pain while urinating, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. I paid no attention to these symptoms since my focus was on the family. As the semester ended I saw the result of my academic performance and I was extremely disappointed. During the summer my family issues lightened but my symptoms worsened. I finally brought myself to the clinic and to my surprise I was diagnosed with an infection. I have been on antibiotics since the end of June and after a month of treatment the uncomfortable symptoms are slowly going away. Because of the requirements from my intended major, I retook BIOL102 and BIOL103 is in progress. My mark for BIOL102 was an A-, which made me realized that if not for the severe family problems and the symptoms of the infection, I could have obtained a much higher grade.

The reason that I was unable to submit this appeal within the 21-day appeal deadline was because at the time my attention was still focused on the family issues and I was unaware that I was suffering a medical condition. Also because I saw the final grade for my BIOL102 summer course I realized the poor grades from the winter semester was due to circumstances that were out of my control.