Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I hope you are doing well. I am writing this letter as I am petitioning to drop all of my Winter 2023 term courses after the drop date has passed, which include PHIL 250, PHIL 257, PHIL 256, PHIL 260, and CLST 203.

This school year has definitely been the hardest year of my life. In October of 2022, I had a very intense health scare that resulted in me being hospitalized three times. I ended up taking a month off of school and dropping one of my Fall semester courses to give myself some time to recover enough to return to my studies. While at the time that seemed to be enough for me to get back on track with my academics, I have since learned that it was not, and I feel as though my academics never fully recovered from the unforeseen challenges I faced last fall. I did not fully recover from my illness until February, therefore I was still experiencing some symptoms such as exhaustion and brain fog, which definitely had an impact on my academic performance. Since my marks did not measure up to my standards in the first semester of this year, I applied a lot of pressure on myself to do better this semester, but instead of helping me stay focused, that mindset had adverse effects, and has caused an unbearable amount of anxiety for me surrounding my school work. It has been very difficult to manage all of my work this semester, and attempting to focus on one thing at a time has felt impossible. This anxiety has had a significant impact on my everyday life including my sleep, and it is rare that I get more than four or five hours of sleep in a night, which makes it even more difficult to get everything done during the day. The immense stress of my academics as well as the health anxiety I have been experiencing since being sick has caused a steep decline in my mental health, and with the advice of my parents and my doctors, we have come to the conclusion that it would be best for me not to finish this semester and to go home early so that I can focus on improving my mental health.

My plan is to withdraw from my courses and repeat this school year starting in Fall 2023 rather than moving onto third year, so that I can go home now and focus on getting my anxiety under control instead of finishing my courses this semester. I will finish my degree in five years instead of four.

Thank you very much for your time

Sincerely,
Payton Hardy