Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I am writing today in hope of dropping HIST 214 ¿Food in Global History¿¿ and ENIN 140 ¿Design Thinking¿¿. I was unable to perform to the best of my ability due to multiple factors beyond my control that effected my performance deeply. I am so regretful that these traumatic events effected my mental state so profoundly. I feel I have failed myself as a result of my own mental illness¿¿ destruction. I have made steps toward getting professional guidance (appointment booked) since I have had no luck with helpful counsel previously from my doctor.

Unfortunately, halfway through my course (HIST 214) near the end of June, a close family member passed away very suddenly in her sleep. What made things significantly worse, is that two weeks later, I was driving alone to clear my head and got into a pretty severe car accident. It was extremely traumatic for me, as I have severe issues with anxiety already in addition to my depression. I have not been able to drive since, and was very anxious to even just be in the passenger seat in the weeks following.

Mental illness is already hardest for me to suppress when doing school work. Juggling an extremely stressful job and course work made it even more of a challenge, and further to have these devastating events occur so close together just made everything feel impossible. It was debilitating. I should have dropped my history course as soon as my grandmother had passed, but felt determined to complete my course successfully. But once my accident happened, I definitely should have, but it was too late to drop. I could hardly bring myself to check in on the course because I was scared, overwhelmed by my own fear and so anxious to be even more overwhelmed with the mountain of work I needed but couldn¿¿t face. There were full books to read for each course module (there were 6) accompanied by a quiz and three page paper. In trying to catch up, I had numerous half-read books where I did not feel knowledgable enough to write quizzes or assignments.
I tried, in the end, to redeem myself by contributing lots of research and critical discussion to the final group assignment and individual essay that went with it. At this point, I did not want to let my group down or give up ¿¿as I feel like I had on myself¿¿ because I truly was interested in the subjects of the course. My last effort in hopes of passing was to do the small assignments to hand in before the course closed. I was only able to complete a portion of them, but as I was away from high-speed internet, my submission process was not successful as I had thought it was (I did double check at the time). I do not have access to these works any longer so by the time I checked my course submissions and grades (or lack thereof), there was no time left to relearn my points and rewrite. Nearing the end of the course I was so terrified by what could happen and desperately wanted to make an effort to pass, to at least show Professor Chowdhury that it wasn¿¿t for lack of interest or caring that I did not engage in her course.

I dropped Design Thinking knowing that this would make things worse and that it was not likely I would finish it, let alone to the best of my ability for the same reasons. Again, as I am in the last couple of courses I need to complete in order to earn my degree, these were both courses I was honestly excited to be taking. When I went back in to my history course in the final stages of trying to work on it, I found that Design Thinking was still on onQ. This is when I noticed that I was unable to drop my course on Solus due to the fact that I had not yet been able to pay my summer tuition. I¿¿d forgotten to address that when dealing with my grief and accident and was immediately alarmed by this; especially since the design thinking course was wrapping up. I¿¿ve been trying to do module work and assignments to compensate over the past couple days, but my mental well being for all of July and still now put me in a dark enough place to isolate myself from everything has made this impossible at this point.

My great grandmother taught me, guided me, helped calm me down and to gain some perspective on life. At school, when I would be struggling with my mental wellbeing and my academics, I would call her to distract me to talk to her about her day. Her wise words and advice were my ¿professional¿¿ help. To say that I was (and still feel) lost without her is putting it lightly. She guided me in my own darkness and I felt out of control without her to ground me. Perhaps the hardest thing about this is learning to do it without her myself.

I am feeling like things are looking up now with a new found sense of resilience, and I am determined to keep this from debilitating me further into failing myself in any capacity. I am eager to get help, confident to complete my degree and to move on successfully, but in order to do so I desperately hope to remove these failures from my transcript.

Best,
Claire Button