Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: After my final exams in April 2020, I planned on going home to Halifax to visit my family before I went back to Kingston for the summer to train with the football team and work for my chemistry professor. I went home with a backpack and three changes of clothes. However, due to the pandemic, and in the blink of an eye, one week has now turned into 18 months. I basically lost my entire life, my 5th and final football season, in-person classes and labs, all of my best friends, roommates, and girlfriend. I haven??t been back since. We even had to hire a moving company to send everything back to Halifax (3500.00). With that said, trying to finish my chemistry degree online from my parent's basement in a depression has been very challenging. I have ADHD, I??m in the QSAS program but have learned from multiple attempted, failed, or dropped classes that I am simply not wired for online learning, especially with something as abstract as physics, which I had no former foundation in. Being a varsity athlete was extremely busy, but I have learned that I needed that kind of structure in order to succeed academically and socially. I have never failed any other courses when I was there in person.

I also had technical difficulties with the exam. Approximately 2 hours into the exam I had a question for the ??proctor? but nobody was there. They must have gotten disconnected or something. So I spend quite a big chunk of time trying to navigate the Examity settings in hopes to reconnect. While doing this, they attempted to call me three times but my phone was obviously on silent in a drawer next to me. So after another 15 minutes or so, I finally got a hold of them and I was guided on how to reconnect to the proctor. After multiple attempts and a lot of time wasted, they finally reconnected and made me do a whole rescan of my room, count and show (front and back) all of the papers on my desk before I finally was even able to continue my exam. I was exhausted, frustrated, and whatever extra time and accommodation I was granted with QSAS was completely negated by something that wasn??t even my fault. I was so frustrated by the whole experience and intrusiveness of the exam proctoring, I didn??t even finish the last parts of the exam.

If this wasn??t bad enough, I wrote the exam on Sept 8th but didn??t get my final mark until Oct. 20th I was extremely concerned because I applied to graduate and was receiving emails from the ??Arts and Science Degree Requirements? telling me that I didn??t have the required credits to graduate. So I reached out to my professor to see what was going on and was told that she actually marked the exams two days after they were written and that she would take a look at what could be wrong. I logged in the next day and miraculously, my mark was finally posted for me to see. I recently spoke to an academic advisor on Oct 22nd who also could not explain the delay. Obviously, this was not a coincidence, there was a glitch, error or just plain negligence somewhere. I didn??t know I even failed the course until Oct 20. By then, even if I wanted to, it was too late to register to retake the class for the 3rd time.

This is just a first-year course, I??ve taken and passed a physical Chemistry class (CHEM221) with a B which is way more relevant to my major and interests. also, I??ve done two PHYS118 midterms online which I passed with an A and B. At this point, I just can??t do this class for the 3rd time. I am working full-time on the assumption that I have a university degree.

I never imagined that my university experience would end this way and with that said, I am asking you to please consider my extenuating circumstances and reweigh the final exam so I can get a passing grade and finally graduate.