Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I am appealing to waive the 21-day/one term deadline for a subsequent late appeal to drop ENGL 200 (Summer, 2016) and ENGL 281 (Summer, 2016). I will start by stating the extenuating circumstances that prevented me from completing the courses and then explain what prevented me from appealing within the deadline.

In the winter of 2016, the news of the illness of two family members ¿¿ my grandparents who raised me ¿¿ worsened my mental health condition. I was severely depressed, and ended up appealing to drop three courses in the 2016 winter term. At the same time, I made a significant change to my program ¿¿ switching from Physics major to English. As an international student from China and an ESL learner, I felt the stress and urge to catch up with the English subject by taking a full load of summer courses. I assumed wishfully that going back to China and being able to stay with my families would help with my mental health conditions, and that switching to a discipline that I genuinely like would allow me to be mentally ready to do school work, which turned out to be only wishful thinking. What happened that summer was that I still couldn¿¿t struggle out of my depression and weren¿¿t able to complete the courses.

I met with a school counsellor several times in the late summer of 2016. After the summer grades were posted, we did talk about appealing to drop the courses. However, our last meeting was cancelled due to school regulations at the end of that summer. Having not heard back from the office regarding future appointment, I didn¿¿t follow up. There are two reasons for having failed to appeal within the deadline. First, at the end of the summer, although my mental health condition was improving, I was still in a depressed and low-energy state, and could barely get anything done. Second, due to second language issues, I misinterpreted the appealing regulations ¿¿ I thought the 21-day/one term deadline meant I was only able to appeal in the summer term rather than the following term, causing me not taking any action to appeal in the fall, 2016; I was not that it was an option. When the summer term passes, I thought that was it ¿¿ that I will not be able to appeal to drop the courses and the best I can do to save my grades is to retake those courses.

In the following terms, I did retake ENGL 200 and passed the course. However, as for ENGL 281, it is not offered this academic year. The reason that I now need to appeal to drop these failed units instead of waiting to retake the course in the future is because I find out recently that the prerequisite for enrolling in 300-level English courses is an average of 2.4 in all ENGL courses ¿¿ a prerequisite with the failed summer units I do not meet. In other words, I will need to drop them to keep going.

The academic year of 2016-2017 has seen a lot of changes in me. In terms of dealing with mental health conditions, I was referred to a GP psychiatrist and have been meeting with her regularly to discuss problems and strategies. In terms of academics, I have made many attempts to keep myself on track ¿¿ for example, getting enrolled in the peer mentor program ¿¿ and my term GPA has improved significantly. I have a reason to believe that I am now both mentally and academically ready to keep going with the English program. Therefore, it is necessary that I appeal to drop the failed ENGL units to keep going. I hope you will give me a second chance.

Thank you for taking the time considering this appeal.

Sincerely,
Yiwen Tao