Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Appeal Letter: Dear Board of Studies,

My name is Yue Qian, and my student number is 20216593. I am appealing the Associate Dean's decision to deny my appeal to drop MATH225 (Summer, 2022), MATH280 (Fall, 2022), MATH384 (Fall, 2022), STAT361 (Fall, 2022), STAT463 (Fall, 2022), ECON212 (Fall, 2022), after the academic deadline because the circumstance I face have a different situation but they all name as a mental health problem.

As outlined in the Associate Dean's decision letter, they claimed that I have experienced similar challenges previously and have been advised that I should drop courses and reduce my course load before drop deadlines. However, the previous challenge from last year for me was having suicidal thoughts, which impact my ability to attend class and have regular life during that period. From the summer to fall term, my mental health problem is more likely being affected by my parents. As they keep asking me to take more courses in one semester to get enough units in my undergraduate study. Nevertheless, my parents keep transferring negative energy to me as their way of reducing pressure. Too many expectations from my parents accumulated in my fall term study made me gather more anxiety and guilty when facing my current situation. During this time, I found Craig who works in Student Wellness Center for help. We focus on creating a self-protection 'bubble' at the beginning to prevent negative information and energy from outside and try to focus on me. Later, we discussed some options for me to handle the time when I couldn't avoid the negative energy from my parents. Combining those solutions did help me reduce anxiety during the daytime and most of the nighttime. We are allowed to have some emotional feelings at a few nighttime, but we try to control the impact of these feelings. Unfortunately, this problem takes longer than my previous situation to work out, so it affects my study passion deeply, especially during the fall term. With the pressure from my parents, even though I wish to drop some courses before the academic deadline as advised previously by the Associate Dean and my counselor, I have to take those courses in order to earn enough units in the semester as my parents wish me to do.

For future study, I will decrease the course amount in each term and extend my undergraduate study period, and I will consider changing from the honor program to the general program to reduce course pressure. Meanwhile, I will ask my private counselor for help to better deal with the situation between my parents and myself in both study and life.

For all those discussions and considerations, I decided to appeal the Associate Dean's decision to deny my appeal to drop MATH225 (Summer, 2022), MATH280 (Fall, 2022), MATH384 (Fall, 2022), STAT361 (Fall, 2022), STAT463 (Fall, 2022), ECON212 (Fall, 2022) after the academic deadline, and I will continue to find the best way to get success in both study and life. Thank you so much for considering my request.

Sincerely,

Yue Qian