Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Appeal Letter: My name is Trevor Sokolowski and I am looking to appeal the decision of the Associate Dean of Academics for my Waive a Petition Deadline and Credit Standing for PHYS 216 (Winter 2022).

During the Winter 2022 semester, courses were ran online and in-person due to frequent changes in COVID-19 restrictions. I made a decision to spend more time at home due to the difficulties between certain family members during the month of March. I experienced these struggles and tensions first hand and spent many hours talking, calming, and stressing among my family during that semester. This situation which started early in Winter 2022, spanned well into the Summer of 2022. Only in the final months of the summer, did my family feel to be in functioning order by understanding one another’s points of view, non-malicious intents, and proper communication amongst one another. Leading up to week 8 family discussions were argumentative but short lived as they didn’t span longer than a day. As I had passed the week 8 drop deadline, my living situation at home became incredibly strenuous on my mental health. As a 22 year old I found myself in a situation to mend the broken ties in my older family. I was talking with my older brother, night in and night out to resolve many discrepancies between family members. This mental and emotional battle was worthwhile as I find that my family has stayed strong and managed to foster a tension free understanding home. It did come at the cost of my academics that term which is most evident on grading schemes with heavy final exams.

I am relived that this family environment has not arose since. However, I appear I have waited too long to bring it to the attention of the Academic offices as I have passed the 1 Year Petition Deadline. The family tensions that worsened over the final months of the winter semester were not fully repaired until partway in the summer. Since this took an egregious amount of time to mend, I held doubts that this was the last I would deal with this situation and thus held out an academic appeal. With the knowledge I have now I am happy to say that this aggressive environment is well in the past with no signs of returning. I held out applying for this academic appeal in fear that it would return but I am well at ease that it won’t. This situation is burdensome to bring forward as it is hard to put detail in resurfacing dark memories. I have refrained from sharing a lot of the impact but if more is required I will discuss more.

The habits that I had formed and nurtured in the years prior: academic prioritization, valuing daily tasks, and family discussions to help put me in a strong mental space; were all starting to deteriorate. The in-person return for exams was the worst timing due to the family difficulties being at an all time high. The assignments showed a deteriorating performance as my family situation worsened. The heavy weight of the exam was at my worst focus, as that was when I was most disconnected from my studious environment and headspace. The shift in my priorities show a clear diversion from my previous academic patterns.

Leading up to the Winter 2022 semester, I had brought my GPA, CGPA, and teachable GPA requirements all to the their respective requirements in the past 4 semesters with better and better academic performances. I had a disastrous Fall 2019 semester which I mentally recouped from and showed resilience by improving my GPA from a 0.860 (Fall 2019) to a 2.0 in Winter 2020. Each semester I put more and more work to fix the wrongs of my academic start, going from a 2.0 GPA in Winter 2020, into a 2.760 GPA in Fall 2020, to a 2.67 GPA in Winter 2021 to a 3.15 GPA in Fall 2021. This pattern of growth and change is hit by the outlier of Winter 2022 with an uncharacteristic 1.53. My GPHY teachable went from a 2.10 to a 3.21 in my years of change (Fall 2019 to present). My PHYS teachable was at a 2.075 and went to a 3.00 before Winter 2022. I hope that I have illustrated how far I have come academically and how much of an outlier this grade is. Being impacted the way I was is not reflective of the student I am. The family dynamic worsening as the week 8 drop deadline closed is an extremely unfortunate timing that I wish could’ve gone my way. As I look to graduate from Arts and Science, this grade is pulling down my PHYS teachable tremendous amounts making me not meet the Con-Ed criteria. I tried to work as hard as I could the following semester by achieving a 3.70 in a previous 1.0 course (ASTRO 101). I did not want to load multiple courses while I was working full time on campus and result in a semester that would hurt my PHYS teachable GPA more than it would help. The reason I am asking for just the one course (PHYS 216) is because I have outworked my previous academic mistakes, except for this one. I was hoping to put in the work and show that I could achieve the grades required but I still fell short.