Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Letter of Appeal

a. I am appealing to receive credit (CR) standing in STAT263 (Fall 2020). I have completed all coursework in this course however I ended with a grade of a C - which I feel was impacted by an extenuating circumstance which greatly impeded my ability to do well in this course.

b. In my position, given the course¿¿s syllabus, the final exam in this course was worth a large portion of the course grade, if you did better on the final than the midterm. I started studying over a week in advance of the exam which was on December 11th. On the 7th of December I began to feel extremely exhausted and unwell. I started to experience night-sweats and wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat with a pounding headache and I was unable to sleep soundly. I experienced some sort of physical ailment, as well as a mental fog during the day from sleep deprivation and a fever. Additionally, due to the provincial lockdown that was recently announced to take place in Alberta, the province I am from, not only did this illness impact my ability to study for my exam, it impacted my mental well-being as I was stressed out about the possibility of not being able to travel back home. I had my flight booked to travel back to Alberta the day after my statistics exam, on December 12. The provincial wide lock down will take place on December 13, and I was trying to go back into the province before it was locked down, however if I was feeling unwell I would not be allowed to board the plane and I would have to reschedule my entire flight. I was stressed out about planning my trip home, and trying to get better as soon as possible, in addition to the stress of studying statistics, which was intensive calculation heavy work. I had two more exams to study for the following week that were worth over sixty percent of my final grade in each course, but I stuck to studying as much statistics only, leading up to the exam as I was feeling so sick that I could barely concentrate for more than an hour or two each day, and then I would be exhausted and have no energy left to even read through my notes or look at past exams. My illness continued to escalate, I not only had night sweats and trouble sleeping at this point, but two and three days leading up to my statistics exam I felt extremely exhausted the entirity of the day and I could only study for around one or two hours, unfortunately even though everything in my mind was telling me to study all day like I would usually do. I decided that it was time I spoke with a healthcare professional, to seek advice on what to do, as I thought I might have COVID-19. I called 811 and spoke to a registered nurse, and I was told to stay at home and not risk going out and getting tested for COVID because they recommend if you have the symptoms it is too dangerous to go out in public to get tested for the risk of spreading it to healthy people. After telling the nurse my symptoms, she told me that I likely did have COVID-19, however I should remain isolated in my home and try and stay hydrated and get lots of rest. I was home alone at this point in exam break, so I did not come into contact with anyone and depite feeling severely unwell, I continued my attempt at studying statistics, and fighting against my urges to sleep. On the nights before of my exam I couldn't even sleep due to my high fever, so I was barely able to study or focus for long enough to get anything done. At this point I wanted to write this exam and not postpone it because of my other two exams that I needed time to study for. So I decided to just go ahead and write this exam despite feeling extremely ill and probably having coronavirus. As I felt so ill the exam did not go well for me and I could tell that there was a potential risk of failing the exam. As you can see from my transcript, I've always put in my best efforts in my classes for the past 4 years at Queen¿¿s. I feel like my final grade on the exam, which was a fail, was extremely impacted by my extenuating circumstance which I have described that occurred in the week of my statistics final. After this exam about a day later I started to feel a little bit better, I improved my symptoms for the next three days and by the time my other two exams came along I was feeling back to normal, and that is why I'm not appealing any other courses except for statistics. My professor stated that he would be revising our course grades because a lot of people failed the final, however my grade was never a revised and my final grade of a C ¿¿ in the course, rather than a fail, was due to the fact that my midterm mark and quiz grades brought my grade up to a pass. Still, my grade was not at all representative of how well I could've done if I was not feeling ill for the week leading up to the final exam.
c. Should I be granted the opportunity to receive CR, I would be able to claim the credits for this course ( an elective in my Life Science Major degree plan) without the need to retake the course, so I would be able to explore my other interests this upcoming semester such as taking three 400-level Life Sciences courses, a 300 level Life Science course, and another elective I am interested in personally. I am grateful that in my final semester I will have the chance to further develop myself as a person and explore my passions. I felt that I had a good grasp on the concepts learned in STAT263 and the significant impact of the illness I had on how I performed on the final exam should not permanently impact my GPA and transcript.