Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

This is Jingxuan Sun, with the student ID 20337376. I am petitioning to drop the following two courses in Fall 2023: DEVS 260 Globalization, Gender & Development and DEVS 220 introduction to indigenous studies due to extenuating circumstances out of my control.

As my current major was in Global Development, I started the Fall semester 2023 with a selection of five courses, the other three are DEVS 280 Global Engagement, DEVS 230 Global Political Economic Development and FREN 106 Communication et Culture I. However, from the end of September 2023, I had the bad news from my family that my grandfather was unwell, easy to get tired with appetite reduced. I had very good relations with my grandparents and they also promised me to visit me in Canada. I started to get worried for my grandfather as he was not improving but refused to go to the hospital. I had to keep asking my parents regularly for the update.

At the end of October my grandfather started to develop unknown skin rashes, with extreme fatigue, dizziness, irregular heartbeat and loss of appetite. He finally agreed to be sent to the hospital on 2 November and he was diagnosed with a disease called “Severe thrombocytopenia, with increased white blood cells in the patient's bone marrow, severe decrease in red blood cells and platelets” and was admitted into the hospital ward straight away. Please see attached his hospital notes. This had a big blow to me as I was so worried about my grandfather and blamed myself that I should have insisted to ask my family to send my grandfather to the hospital earlier then he would not have been in such critical condition.

This had severe impact on my mentality and ability to perform well in my assessments. I got the news on 3 November and I was not able to concentrate on the assignment due on 5 November for the course DEVS 220, and I submitted my work one week late. I also missed the chance to submit the discussion post due on 9 November for the same course. For DEVS 260, which I felt most difficult due to its complicated concepts and theories, I felt my performance was negatively affected for the research paper due on 7 November. However, I had no energy or focus to apply for the academic consideration for these affected assignments. Therefore, these two courses were hit the hardest and the effects on my assignments cannot be mitigated by academic consideration, which would be too late to apply.

In addition, the feeling of failure in a series of assignments added huge pressure to me on top of my worry and anxiety for my grandfather. I was on the edge of emotional breakdown and in mid November I even thought about jumping off from the balcony. My family noticed that I was not myself and urged me to seek counselling help. I then booked the appointment and went to talk to a very kind Mental Health Nurse Kelly at the University Student Wellness Services on 17 November. Please see attached the email and letter from Kelly for my certificate. She also confirmed that I couldn’t handle a full course load. Indeed I could not practically complete the requirements for these two courses especially in the final assessments, while I was also trying to handle the other three courses.

As for the question of negative impact to the other three courses, they were also affected but most of the assessments happened before my grandfather's diagnose and emergency inhospitalisation, so the impact was not as significant. On the other hand, I had to consider about the study pressure for the Winter semester and I had to keep the other three courses to avoid a vicious cycle of heavy course load building up in the following semesters. Therefore, I am petitioning to withdraw from the two courses DEVS 260 and DEVS 220, which have been more severely impacted and to concentrate better for my other courses. This decision is intended to ease my academic load and alleviate my psychological stress for a quicker recovery.

I sincerely hope that the committee will kindly consider my extenuating circumstance that seriously affected my performance in particular in the two courses DEVS 260 and DEVS 220, and will kindly approve my request to drop these two course now.