Petition Letter
In late September, I was sexually assaulted by another student, and that gravely affected my overall mental health as well as my academic performance.
After the first few weeks, I realized I let myself fall behind and started struggling with doing the most minimal tasks. I decided to reach out and get therapy provided by the hospital. Although this helped in certain aspects, I found myself unable to focus on my workload and was still falling behind or not submitting my best work. Consequently, I decided to drop a class in hopes that I could better manage my time and try to keep up.
Unfortunately, that did not help as well as I had hoped. I found myself losing motivation and still not improving my grades or keeping myself up to date.
As I continued my therapy sessions, there were moments when I was able to push myself and complete my work on time, but I found that it drained a lot out of me. I found myself burnt out over the most minimal tasks.
Over a few months, my grades kept on getting lower and I felt as if it was my fault for not being able to keep up, pushing aside what previously happened in September. After Christmas break, I decided to try harder to improve my grades and get back to my normal workflow but found myself ultimately in a very depressive state.
Keeping up with my therapy, I asked for help, and it was recommended that I apply for Academic consideration. I consulted with Barb Lotan and we took the steps to apply for the consideration.
A big part of my circumstance was that I did not want to accept what had happened and let myself believe it was entirely my fault. This took a big toll on my school work as I put in the effort and asked for help but the results were not showing up academically. Although I had the Academic consideration, I decided to only use it once since I believe that I was being dramatic in my situation and it was unlike me to get such bad grades in school. Eventually, it did more damage than good and I found myself unable to get out of bed and start studying for my courses.
This lead to doing extremely badly in most of my classes and left my dreading the return to school for next year.
I decided to take some summer classes to help improve my GPA and with the help of Barb, we also decided to apply for a late dropout.
After the first few weeks, I realized I let myself fall behind and started struggling with doing the most minimal tasks. I decided to reach out and get therapy provided by the hospital. Although this helped in certain aspects, I found myself unable to focus on my workload and was still falling behind or not submitting my best work. Consequently, I decided to drop a class in hopes that I could better manage my time and try to keep up.
Unfortunately, that did not help as well as I had hoped. I found myself losing motivation and still not improving my grades or keeping myself up to date.
As I continued my therapy sessions, there were moments when I was able to push myself and complete my work on time, but I found that it drained a lot out of me. I found myself burnt out over the most minimal tasks.
Over a few months, my grades kept on getting lower and I felt as if it was my fault for not being able to keep up, pushing aside what previously happened in September. After Christmas break, I decided to try harder to improve my grades and get back to my normal workflow but found myself ultimately in a very depressive state.
Keeping up with my therapy, I asked for help, and it was recommended that I apply for Academic consideration. I consulted with Barb Lotan and we took the steps to apply for the consideration.
A big part of my circumstance was that I did not want to accept what had happened and let myself believe it was entirely my fault. This took a big toll on my school work as I put in the effort and asked for help but the results were not showing up academically. Although I had the Academic consideration, I decided to only use it once since I believe that I was being dramatic in my situation and it was unlike me to get such bad grades in school. Eventually, it did more damage than good and I found myself unable to get out of bed and start studying for my courses.
This lead to doing extremely badly in most of my classes and left my dreading the return to school for next year.
I decided to take some summer classes to help improve my GPA and with the help of Barb, we also decided to apply for a late dropout.