Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom it may concern,
My name is Simon Pierson, and I am a third-year film student who is currently enrolled in. I am writing you concerning dropping a course, specifically Film 275 with Dr. Dorit Naamand. I have confirmed with my professor for Film 275 that I am currently not on track to pass this course. In the past, I have excelled in creative classes such as this course. But this semester my course load has been quite heavy, and this stress has infringed on my ability to balance five classes. As somebody who struggles with an anxiety disorder, I have found that overwhelming amounts of work often contribute to my well-being. While I have never struggled with a five-course load before, being in the third year of my program has been much more demanding, and in hindsight, I should have taken only four courses to be able to grasp all of the content in each of my courses. Instead, I have found myself trying to prioritize my well-being as my anxiety has greatly affected my ability to complete all of my tasks, thus becoming an extenuating circumstance, which has in turn left me with what will be a failing grade in Film 275.
As someone who wants to continue my education into graduate school and further film schools, I greatly worry about the effects of a fail on my transcript as well as its effects on my overall GPA. Being out of the practice of therapy as well as living on my own has been extremely hard to balance on top of a full course load of studies. Being medicated for my anxiety has greatly helped my day-to-day routine and made it possible for me to attend university without having to take classes solely online. While asynchronous classes help to take some of the weight off of my busy weeks, in my third year, I have found that the classes are much more demanding than in my first and second years. This has been a major adjustment for my time management, which has never been something I’ve struggled with in the past. However, my course load has been affected by mental health struggles with anxiety that have been caused by stress. I considerably thought about dropping this fifth course on my schedule after the course grew more demanding and was not mandatory, which in turn ended up affecting my success in my mandatory courses. However, I decided against it because I thought I could at least pass the class and focus more on my well-being along with my academics. Though this has not been the case, starting around the end of January, I began to struggle immensely with the effects of anxiety in my daily routine. This led to a lack of attendance in my classes, and I had trouble even getting groceries or being present in social settings. Film 275 is a physically demanding class that requires presentations and participation as a major contribution to the student's grade level. I was well aware of this when I first enrolled in the course, although with a drastic change in my social anxiety, my contributions to participation and physical presence in this course became nonexistent. My escalating mental health issues have brought me to request dropping this course during this past week, as I consulted with my professor and ultimately decided it was what was my best option, especially when approaching the stress of finals.
Going forward, I have enrolled in a summer course that is worth six credits, as I have one course to make up for in credits as well as this course. I plan to find another course that I can take this summer that will allow me to take a course for my fourth-year course load, ultimately lightening my next semester to avoid this scenario arising again. Therefore, I intend for my future semesters to consist of four courses rather than five, or at least intend to plan ahead and take more online courses to better balance my anxiety about in-person participation in classes. As my mental health and anxiety are something I will continue to deal with, I will be starting therapy again this summer following finals to work through some of the things that contribute to my social anxieties in class.


Thank you for your time and consideration,
Simon Pierson