Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: The conditions I was living in during quarantine resurfaced some unprocessed traumatic memories from my childhood and adolescence, which led to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. This begun around July of this year and has been persisting since, making keeping up with coursework this term a struggle. For the first several weeks of the term I did almost no coursework as I was practically bedridden with no motivation for anything at all, let alone schoolwork. Since then I begun seeing a therapist and taking other steps to improve and cope with these issues, and as a result gained the ability to do some work and started attempting to catch up on what I had missed. I dropped 1 of the 3 courses I was taking, thinking 2 courses would be a sufficiently light workload given my reduced ability to work. However, recently my condition has been extremely unstable; consistently working for extended periods of time has been difficult due to fatigue, reduced motivation levels, and frequent feelings of anxiety. It was only recently (after the deadline to drop had passed) that I had the realization that I was too far behind in PSYC221 and had missed too many deadlines already for catching up to be feasible. Further, the stress involved in attempting to catch up would be counterproductive to my recovery. I realize I should have dropped this course prior to the deadline but due to my condition I haven't been acting entirely rationally and, excited by some of the recent progress I had made, naively convinced myself I had made enough progress to be able to do the work required to catch up in time. Attached to this application is a letter from my psychotherapist attesting to this, however I will also be seeing my family physician in 2 weeks or so and also provide a letter from her if more evidence is required. Thank you for your time.