Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Student : 20300653
Name: Adam Eddie
Appeal: To drop ECON111 (Fall, 2021) & MATH121B (Winter, 2022)

Letter Of Appeal

To the Associate Dean of Academics,
In this letter I will not only tell you, but prove to you that I have been improving my attention and performance in school through many approaches. I will also exposit exactly how ADHD has affected my grades, and why I deserve to have ECON111, and MATH121B dropped.

In 2018, I was provisionally diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It has been very difficult, especially in math-focused subjects, and I will explain why this is. When I sit down to solve a calculus problem, as an example, I usually can last through reading the question (in recent days), but then if the answer is not immediately obvious, I stop thinking. There??s a sort of fog that appears in front of my eyes. It is about five minutes later (in recent days it is closer to two minutes) when I realize I??m not thinking about math, in fact I??m thinking about how dirty a window is, or how strange my desk looks in the afternoon light. This happens about once every eight minutes on an average day (I??ve counted by filming myself, though it is a rough figure). This has made it difficult to achieve what I want to achieve.

Improving on my attention deficit, whether it is caused by ADHD or not, has been at the forefront of my thought since grade 11. After realizing that doing five or more hours of homework every weeknight was not getting me to where I wanted to be, I contacted my doctor, Dr. Toubassi.(1) She referred me to the Possibilities Clinic in Toronto where they gave me a diagnosis of ADHD. This diagnosis was provisional, a strategy used to allow me to try several medications(1), none of which helped me. They also said that it could be a learning disability, probably math related, but this would require a psychoeducational assessment to diagnose. I went through the process of obtaining extra time on tests in high school.(2) I took a fifth year of high school to try and improve my skills. I joined an ADHD support group.(3) Last semester I contacted RARC to start the process for a psychoeducational assessment(4). So even though it was a provisional diagnosis, and not confirmed, the amount of time I have spent trying to fix the situation points to the high probability that it is, in fact, a medical phenomenon and not just an attention problem that can be fixed by trying harder.

In its list of ADHD symptoms, The Mayo Clinic lists poor time management skills before it lists focus problems. This explains why I am appealing to drop both Economics and Mathematics. Instead of just Mathematics. Although math is the primary problem, balancing five courses is like balancing a five-direction seesaw above a fire. Whichever class I??ve gotten a good grade in recently, some time can now come from there. In the case of Economics, I mismanaged this balance. Math was part of the problem as it takes up an inordinate amount of time for me.
But this, I argue, should be attributed to my provisional diagnosis. I say that because I have been working tirelessly to try to figure out why I work so ineffectively. I ask you therefore, why would I be looking for something for all these years if it was not real? The evidence of my search is attached.

There are a few steps to my plan moving forward. The first step is to get the psychoeducational assessment offered through Queen??s, and if all goes well, that should yield more strategies for improvement. I have also decided on a fifth year of university so I can excel. I will continue my regular meetings with my SASS advisor, whom I have been meeting with regularly this year.(5) If the psychologists at the clinic recommend it, I will agree to counseling from a life coach or therapist. I have also decided on a Biology major over my other choice, Physics, as Biology is lighter on math. With these steps in place, I will be able to finally excel in school.

Conclusion: You may ask yourself why I did not drop these courses before the drop date. The reason is that I knew university would be tough for me and I was prepared for my marks to drop. I was not going to let that keep me from taking the full course load. I would like to ask you, not from a place of bitterness, but from a place of honest reflection: Do I deserve a lower grade point average for trying to persevere when challenged?
Thank you so very much for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

References:

These references have in-text citations, denoted with a number contained in parentheses: ()

The file name of each document attached is the number that it is referencing.

1. Dr. Toubassi, see reference letter.
2. Miller, see email regarding independent education plan (IEP)
3. O'Brien, see email regarding ADHD support group.
4. RARC, see email referencing a plan to take a psychoeducational assessment
5. Weissman, see email referencing regular meetings with a SASS advisor