Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Hello,
My name is Jessica McLean (20056738) and I am appealing to drop CISC101 (Winter 2019) without academic penalty. There has been a plethora of extenuating circumstances that have kept me from dropping this course before the drop date.

The primary extenuating circumstance is the onset of severe panic attacks throughout the duration of the course. I am a second-year student in a geography major who is only taking psychology courses, aiming to fully pursue a psychology major in the next year. I decided to take CISC101, attempting to lead into a CISC minor beside the psychology major. However, I underestimated the cognitive ramifications of what that would entail. I have never taken a computer science course before, so it tapped into a serious issue of repressed anxiety and pessimism that revealed itself as panic attacks and neurotic excoriation (self mutilation of hands, feet and lips) whenever I would try to concentrate. It would trigger scary heart palpitations and an inability to revisit a healthy state of psychological arousal to accomplish normally stressful activities (like planning the day/evening, thinking about other classes, returning to assignments) without triggering another heart palpitation. I have been failing CISC101 primarily due to this circumstance and believe it would be in my best interest to distance myself from such debilitating anxieties.

The reason why I did not consider the panic attacks to be a serious issue before the drop date was because I believed they would calm down once I ¿¿settled into¿ the workload, as it was an entirely new type of learning. I only considered that the issues were not slowing down a week after the drop-date deadline, wherein most of my marks were already affected. I promptly began to seek more professional help after I came to that conclusion. One resource of which happened to be student wellness services, where I sought to discuss my issues with a counselor. I am continuing to seek help on this issue outside of school through private practitioners, however I am only able to find time for corrective counselling after the exam season. As my other courses are more in line with my academic strengths and direction, I am not failing any of my other courses as of right now (although there was a timeframe where all my courses were affected). I discussed my family history of mental health issues (depression, anxiety, ADD, substance abuse, etc.) with the counselor to supplement the claim that severe subjective stress and functional impairment was presenting itself throughout the CISC101. Therefore, since my current mental health issues cannot be resolved until after the exam season, I am appealing to drop CISC101.

About 2 years ago, I was unprofessionally diagnosed with moderate depression based on a self-reported questionnaire; I attended the experiment with/for a friend and the clinic called me back saying that my responses indicated moderately depressive symptoms. I was unsure of how my mental health was then, so I claimed that I was going to be fine and did not need to follow through with any corrective counselling or paperwork. In hindsight, I was very depressed, and it managed to seriously affect my first-year grades. As of right now, I am not depressed anymore, however it suggests that underestimating mental health issues has been a repeated issue of mine. Through experiencing concerning heart palpitations, I am now seriously considering that the panic attacks are a part of a larger issue. As debilitating anxiety has been seriously affecting my ability to not only perform in the course, but also affecting my confidence to drop the course sooner, I cannot dismiss these issues as I have dismissed others in the past. I will be pursuing counselling as soon as I can after exam season and believe that it would be best for my mental health and GPA to drop CISC101.

Another factor that kept me from getting help for my issues sooner was due to how long the wait-list was with student wellness services. I was hesitant because receiving counselling so late in the felt futile. This further fed into the indecision when trying to navigate through the issues and serves as another reason why I didn¿¿t approach to appeal before the academic penalty drop-date.

The last extenuating circumstance that kept me from dropping the course before the drop date was due to a family emergency, distracting me from my academics. There was an OC bus crash in Ottawa (bus 269) where the bus drove into a bus terminal and was totaled. My mother was on the bus. She sat in the first undamaged row, but as a result, she watched the mass of destruction happen before her. I had to visit Ottawa for a weekend. She suffered some psychological trauma, but she is doing alright now with the help of friends and family. The events regarding the crash paired with the panic attacks from CISC101 induced a lot of unseen, debilitating stress that ended up critically affecting my ability to perform well in the course, and my confidence to approach dropping CISC101 sooner.