Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

My name is Xinyu Gao. I am an undergraduate student in Psychology. My student ID is 20014124. I am writing this letter to appeal for credit standing in Language W21 (PSYC 399) and Economics of Healthcare Winter 2021 (ECON 243).¿

My severe health condition had affected my academic performance in those two courses so badly, back in the summer of 2020, I started to feel my body was getting wired. I had severe abdominal pain during menstruation, which lasted much longer than usual. I also felt weak and no strength at all during that time. But at that time, I did not pay attention to it. However, on October 13, 2020, I got a high fever and intense dizziness, so my mother brought me to the hospital. After a thorough body check, I was diagnosed with multiple endometrial polyps. Considering my poor health condition and the size and the number of endometrial polyps, the doctor advised me to stay in the hospital, and he would arrange surgery for me the next day. So I was admitted to the hospital that day, and on the second day, I underwent surgery. Those two days were so tough for me since it was the first time I had any surgical operation. I felt extremely uneasy before and after the surgery, thinking about its effects on my life and study. 2020 Fall term was my second to the last semester in my bachelor's program, so I took a lot of core courses. Because of the decision to pursue further education in this field, I worked hard in the previous semesters to get relatively higher marks. I did not want to ruin my efforts because of the disease. With my mind setting on getting good marks, even when I was in the hospital under monitoring from October 14 to 22, I ignored the uncomfortableness I felt and followed the course progress.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I worked much harder to had a better grade. I attended all the courses with a strong concentration on the course materials. After each class, I reread the materials to digest them completely. However, because of the COVID-19, this year I was in my hometown in China, since the 13-hour time difference between China and Canada, my biological clock got messed up. Besides, I got less time to rest after the surgery with more time spending on the study. So by the end of the fall semester, my body again got out of control. As a result, some of the indicators were abnormal after a body check. The doctor was so concerned about it and asked me to stay in the hospital for close monitoring. So on November 26, 2020, I was again admitted to the hospital for another two weeks until December 6, 2020. In these two weeks, the study load reduced with the end of the term at the corner. Thus, I was able to rest properly, which brought the abnormal indicators back to normal. Before I left the hospital, the doctor seriously suggested me to take good care of my body by having enough rest and a healthy diet. He said even though my body seemed well by now, it might turn worse again if I burned myself out.

After the final exam of fall 2020, I had rest for several weeks, but after the beginning of winter term, I concentrated on study again. Because during the winter term I had applied to graduate programs and was looking for jobs, I had numbers of interviews, those works took a lot of time. Since I had to take 300-level and 400-level courses, I also had to pay much energy on study. Therefore, during the whole winter term, I did not have enough time to sleep or rest, then at the end of March, I felt severe abdominal pain again, so I had a return visit with the doctor and took a B ultrasound test, the result showed that I had hysteromyoma. Because of this, I had submitted an appeal to drop late the PSYC399, since at that I had a re-take exam of PSYC301, this course was hard for me so I had to focus on studying PSYC301, and I also had the final exam of ECON243 just one day before the PSYC399. Because the re-take exam of PSYC301 was just five days before the final exam of ECON243, I thought I would not have enough time to review the two courses,ECON 243 and PSYC399, after taking the re-take exam of PSYC 301, so I applied to drop late of the course PSYC399. But I did not receive response before the final exam of ECON243, so I had to review both courses. However, because my severe abdominal pain, it often existed for several hours a day, I could not focus on reviewing two courses, so my performance was not good in both exams.

Because of my poor health condition and the huge stress I encountered, these two courses' scores were undoubtfully far from satisfactory, which dragged down my GPA a lot. As I mentioned above, I had applied to graduate programs and had already received some offers, it said I had to keep my average scores above 70 to translate into unconditional offers. But with a low GPA, I might not get any chances. Therefore, I sincerely hope that the university could allow me to credit stand these two courses, Language W21 (PSYC 399) and Economics of Healthcare Winter 2021 (ECON 243) to continue my further education as planned.