Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Jenn Stephenson,

I am appealing to drop GRMN 101 ¿¿ Beginner¿¿s German 1, (Winter, 2019).

I am a first-year student. The reason why I am appealing to drop this class is due to my Grand-mother falling ill around the start of February. Since my parents were both out of the country for work related issues, I was needed to travel back and forth from Kingston and Ottawa at least once per week for the entire month of February in order to attend medical appointments with my grand-mother. My parents are the primary care-takers for my grand-parents and since they spoke little English, they therefore lacked the resources to attend doctor¿¿s appointments by themselves. Because of the comparatively short travel time, I opted to take care of my grand-mother¿¿s appointment until the end of February, when my parents were due to be back. This matter, however, has contributed a noticeable amount of stress on my academic¿¿s studies. As midterms approached, I had to make the difficult decision to sacrifice German, in order to keep up my grades for the other four full unit courses, as I need to meet requirements in order to be able to choose them as a potential major. I am usually good at managing stress, however learning an unknown language while having to miss several classes in order to drive back and forth from Ottawa proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought. This has been reflected on my midterm mark as it was far below the class average, and my personal expectations.

During this time, I also did a lot of thinking about what kind of path I wanted to take in order to plan out a future that I would enjoy living. I decided that my current state would not allow me to reach my full potential and achieve my goals. Therefore, I had a meeting with an ArtSci student counsellor and Professor Knight from the computing faculty and made the decision to sign up for the two prerequisite classes offered during the summer, in order to be able to switch into Computer Science next Fall. I feel much more confident with this new plan and am looking forward to studying computing. I also have 6 units in transfer credits from an AP course completed in high school which would still satisfy the 30 units required this year. German 101 is without a doubt going be my worst grade and would significantly affect my CGPA. This could affect my transition into the faculty of computing, and I do not want that to be the case. Dropping German 101 would also allow me to focus on the rest of my classes and catch up on readings so I can be more prepared for the approaching final exams.

However, switching into Computer science still requires me to choose one of my current courses has a major during the May selection time. Therefore, I believe that dropping German 101 would greatly improve my ability to perform better in my four other classes, especially PSYCH-100 in order to achieve the CGPA that I need.

Thank you for your time and consideration.