Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Appeal Letter: Dear Board of Studies,

Hope all is well with you. I am appealing the Associate Dean's decision to deny my appeal to drop MICR 360 in the Fall 2021 term after the academic deadline. I wanted to address some things in this appeal of why my last appeal was denied. In my denied appeal, it states that I should have dropped the course at the time of the deadline and highlights that extenuating circumstances involve uncontrollable events impacting academic performance. If I did not stress the severity of my grief in my previous letter during this time and its impact on my academic performance, I apologize and do so now. In context, my second midterm was on November 4 and the drop deadline was November 10, following my uncle's death on October 4. With respect to the timeline, I was still very much grieving during this block of time and I wanted to believe that the midterm I had right after the drop deadline would be better. It was me being somewhat optimistic on dark days and hoping life would help me out after something so traumatic. It is hard to accept a defeat like that. I did not want to accept that dropping the class would have been the best option for me mentally as I have not experienced something like this mentally before. The severity of my grief was deeper than I thought at the time. Now I understand that grief is something that cannot be quantified to start and end on specific days and while I understand that the drop deadline was a month after his death, I want to stress the mental state I was in at the time stopping me from dropping accordingly. This was my first close family death and is something I was new to processing. I completely underestimated the toll it would take on my mental health, which is why I missed that deadline. I promise you with everything I have that my grief was an extenuating circumstance that impacted me in more ways I can imagine to explain and between his death and the drop deadline, I hope it is abundantly clear that it was a tremendously difficult time that was out of my hands. Based on my transcript grades and meeting drop/add deadlines in the past, you can see that this time in my life was very out of character and I have the utmost respect for deadlines, so missing them is very unlike me. Please understand that I would not appeal this grade unless I thought it was absolutely needed and within reach. To add, I spoke to academic advising during this time and was told that my case was strong, thus being why I did not apply to drop earlier late last semester. Although this period in my life will always carry on with me, I can confidently say that now the steps I have taken with my grief significantly alleviated the situation, so I would say it is currently being well managed and has improved. I have strategies in place such as talking to counsellors, spending time with family and overall taking the time off well. As for specific ways my studies were affected, this course and BCHM310 were hit greatly. For context, I ended up dropping BCHM310 from that semester as it was a full-year course in time of the drop deadline this semester, showcasing that it was a very difficult semester for me. This course and the other course were the most impacted that semester and I took the steps to drop the other course on time as I recognize what is good for me mentally now. I also made major changes to my degree plan to work around these issues. This failed grade is a major blip on my record and I truly do not believe it represents me as a student accurately, in addition, it will impact my ability to get into my post-graduation planned programs highly. I hope with everything that this difficult time in my life does not define me as a student and severely impacts the representation of my last 3 years of hard work on this degree. I promise and beg of you to reconsider my appeal and I would be the utmost grateful if you did.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sylvia Kathirkamanathan