Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,
Please consider my appeal to retroactively withdraw from ARTH 288, GNDS 375 and PHIL 374. This winter I experienced an acute mental health crisis which continued into the spring. This crisis was brought on by the convergence of several latent factors.

In December 2015, I was hospitalized with a gastro-intestinal obstruction as symptomatic of my Crohn¿¿s disease. The direct result of this was that I was prescribed prednisone, a corticosteroid with a wide-reaching array of side effects. Although prednisone is very effective in the management of gastro-intestinal inflammation, a course of treatment involving prednisone is considered to be a last resort by my physicians, as the associated side effects frequently have a severely deleterious effect on a patient¿¿s quality of life. These side effects include, but are not limited to, increased anxiety, depression, and mood swings. From the outset of this course of treatment, the above-mentioned side effects severely exacerbated the pre-existing symptoms of my condition of borderline personality disorder, which is characterized in my case by anxiety, depression, and mood swings. My coping mechanisms for this convergence of symptoms involved, to a high degree, increasingly dangerous forms of self-harm. I developed disordered eating patterns in an attempt to manage my continued Crohn¿¿s symptoms. Moreover, a sexual assault I survived in the fall intensified my depression, anxiety, sense of isolation, and mood swings. As a direct result of these cyclical, persistent and extremely negative self-perceptions, I experienced repetitive and intrusive suicidal ideation over the winter and spring. This ideation manifested itself in early April in a suicide attempt, as well as burning and cutting throughout the spring.

I lost access to a great deal of lucidity during this time and became completely isolated from reality, and, by extension, was unable attend most of my classes or complete coursework. At this time, quotidian life in all its forms (especially including, but not limited to, coursework) represented to me a degree of access that felt completely beyond my capacities as I struggled to perform basic functions and maintain a semblance of a normal, functional mental state. My relatively limited access to a sense of reality during this time, however, was maintained and developed by my continued participation in ARTF 101. In contrast to my other coursework, I was able to complete coursework for ARTF 101 as I gained access to the therapeutic and meditative aspects of drawing and painting. My continued, albeit sporadic, participation in ARTF 101 stood in stark contrast to my other coursework, the former alleviating my anxiety and negative self-perception and the latter greatly exacerbating these same. The instructor, Jan Winton, reached out to me and encouraged me to complete the course, an act that in no small part gave me the courage to continue to live through the spring.

Please appreciate the difficulty I have in expressing the nature and severity of my case in this request to retroactively withdraw from ARTH 288, GNDS 375 and PHIL 374. I assure you that my experiences this term did not readily draw me from the completion of my courses.

Yours,
Anne Dunsford