Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing to drop ASTR after the deadline. I had spoken with Professor Hanes about the passing of my grandmother, he suggested I write my pass/fail exam months down the line, however this is my last semester at university and I was going to be starting work soon, I wanted to finish strong and not have any overhead for when I begin work. Due to my grandmother's passing, I was not able to study adequately for our final exam which was pass/fail. I had over an 80 average going in to the exam but because of its pass/fail nature, I failed the course. I have spoken with a councilor about my ongoing circumstances and the negative consequences to my mental health that this situation has resulted in. My grandmother's death caused me immense anxiety and the literal physical requirement of being at home with family members, away from school and all things academic.

Personally, I do not think it is fair for me to fail a course that I performed all of the work for and maintained an 80+ average in, however, It is now clear that my best option for this situation is to drop the course late. In the weeks leading up to the exam I had to spend time at my home which was far from Kingston and in that time, I was dealing with family matters and personal issues, school was inevitably not my primary priority in this time. This just so happened to coincide with our exam date so once I came back to write my exam, I was out of practice and likely should have requested a differal of the date. Nonetheless, I wrote the exam under immense pressure and poor mental health which resulted in my failure. I have a death certificate and documentation from a councilor for my matters and will include such documentation in this appeal. My grandmother's passing took a toll on me in more ways than one, my decision-making was obscured by the fact that I had to deal with the death of someone important to me, my anxiety ever since has been exacerbated and I do not know if I will now graduate on my planned date. Professor Hanes made the argument that in that time I was able to execute some of my class-work and hence he cannot reweigh my grades - this class work was a discussion post that took me about 5 minutes to do, this was nowhere near the same level of academic focus as a final pass/fail examination. Nonetheless, I believe my best option is to drop this course after the deadline as me taking the finale exam under horrible mental health conditions has resulted in my failure of the elective.

Thank you for your help.