Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,
I am writing to formally request a waiver of the drop course deadline back to and including Winter term 2022. This request is due to exceptional and unforeseen circumstances that significantly impacted my academic performance during this period.
During the Winter Break between the Fall 2021 and Winter 2022 terms, I had an extremely bad case of mononucleosis (“mono”). I entered the hospital a few days after Christmas with uncontrollable nausea and thick brain fog so I could not think clearly. After it was confirmed I had mono, I was also told that the proteins being produced in my inflamed liver were seven times the amount they should be producing. I was extremely ill for a week. For the month of January in Winter 2022, I had intense brain fog with extreme constant fatigue.
The physical symptoms slowly went away but I had started feeling extremely stressed and anxious about things that didn’t or were less stressful than before. The pandemic was also at the time. But it was harder and harder for me to leave my apartment, go to class, and talk with classmates. The day of a midterm before reading week of that term, I had my first panic attack which made me miss my midterm. I spoke with my family doctor about these new symptoms, and he prescribed Cipralex (an antidepressant for generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder), which I stayed on for the full year. I had severe side effects to the meds during the first month because I now felt depressed as well. By the time they had started working after first month, I began to feel some relief, and tried to return to my studies. However, by that time, exam season was beginning. I tried my absolute best to study all the content I could, but I failed one course and almost failed another two.
A few months later, in Fall Term 2022 starts and I was feeling better about my mental health and school, but still not 100% from a year earlier. However, my social anxiety flared again and it was worse this time. II would study my class content at home from lecture slides to avoid seeing people in my classes. I would work on problem sets (that the class could work on together) by myself to prevent communicating with my classmates. I would even skip some in-person tests and group projects because the negative feelings were too much. I tried to learn everything from the content on OnQ but I still failed all my classes that term and the Winter term. I had no idea what was going on with me and I kept thinking it was just going to pass because I had never had these problems before. I went to my doctor again who upped the dosage of my medication and I began to see a CBT therapist to help me with these problems.
That summer, I took a summer job and did one course to see if I could do it and I did pass my class. I was able to have sessions with the CBT therapist but then, due to his tight schedule, I could only do a session once every two to three weeks during the Fall term and beginning of Winter term. By then, everything about my daily functioning was affected. It was so severe I was not just afraid of leaving the house, I was afraid of leaving my room in case I bumped into my roommates. I didn’t even have the energy to cook. It was obviously terrifying and I was so disappointed in myself but did not know what to do
Moving into Winter term 2024, my CBT therapist and I were talking about my medical history and why this had started happening to me so suddenly. I mentioned that when I was in Grade 2 I had developed PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections) after a severe case of strep throat. PANDAS is an autoimmune response to strep that targets the brain leading to sudden onset of psychiatric symptoms such as OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) which I developed. I had treatment through SickKids Hospital in Toronto for a year. My therapist then suggested that what I was really having was a flare of OCD again. That it is something that is not “cured” but something that stays with you your whole life. It had just been dormant since I was a kid, but the mono had triggered a flare-up, and we had been treating the wrong thing.
This was the turning point, because neither myself, my doctor, or my family knew about this. In learning about OCD, I found it was in the top 10 by the World Health Organization for most disabling illnesses, and that Canada recognizes it as a mental disability. I began therapy specific for OCD and social anxiety every week since May 2024 to present, and I now feel the best that I have since I got sick in 2022. I can now separate OCD thoughts from my own, and now feel more in control of my life than ever.
I am retroactively asking to waive the drop course deadline at the suggestion of my academic advisor because I was not able to ask at the time because of how significantly I was impacted at the time. I know I am doing so much better now because I actually could go to an academic advisor to ask for help, which I was not able to do before. In the last week of August, with help from OCD therapy and a new self-confidence, I was strong enough to talk to an academic advisor. She told me there is still a way to have my failed courses in the past petitioned, and that writing this letter is the first step. If it gets waived, my next step is to petition to remove my failed grades from Winter 2022 until now, which will raise my GPA to allow me to continue my studies, which I desperately want to do.
I want to talk about my future plan for academic success if my drop course deadline gets waived. I am committed to implementing a strong plan for success moving forward. I have already begun. I am still seeing my OCD therapist once a week, and we have been working on action plans to help myself get to class and get schoolwork done as well as keep my obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions minimized. I am exercising and leaving the house daily. I feel like I have been given a second chance in life. One of my biggest fears was seeing an academic advisor, which I have done, and I now have the confidence to approach them again if I need help or to arrange regular check-ins. I am also applying for academic accommodation for my social anxiety and OCD, so that I have every tool at my disposal to achieve academic success.
I can provide documentation from my doctors about everything. I know I can do this if given a chance. But I will need the drop course deadline waived to do it.
If there is any more information or documentation that you require, please let me know. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.