Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: This term has been rough for me mainly for mental health reasons. I began seeing a therapist at the start of the academic year (September 2024) to begin to process my abusive childhood. After many years of neglecting my own trauma and trying to bury it, I realized doing that was not a good solution. My mental state slowly worsened from fall to the winter term. I had overestimated my abilities for Winter 2025, and so I enrolled in multiple difficult core classes for my degree. This term, due to the effects of processing my trauma and mental health emergencies with myself and my partner, my academic performance drastically worsened. Around the middle of January, I was in a depressive state due to negative experiences with my family over the winter break. My girlfriend had a mental health emergency at this time and was admitted to the KGH inpatient mental health unit for about a week. This devastated me and I was unable to focus on any of my classes for more than a week. This resulted in missing course fundamentals, and I have been unable to catch up ever since. I continued to have panic attacks and mental health issues going into February due to the stresses of catching up on all the course material I missed, along with handling my other commitments. In an attempt to help this, I dropped one of my core courses to go from five courses to four. However, my mental state continued to worsen. I ended up admitting myself into the KGH emergency room for suicidal thoughts and a plan to commit suicide around middle of March. I stayed at KGH for about 15 hours where I was placed into the emergency mental health unit and was asked questions about my mental state. After I was released, KGH referred me to outpatient psychiatry at Hotel Dieu hospital, which I am still waiting for my first appointment in April. Overall, due to my deteriorating mental state throughout the year and mental health emergencies this term, my academic performance greatly suffered. I was unable to do any schoolwork for most of January, and for a week in March for the reasons mentioned above. As my courses rely on memorization and repeated practice, this has set me back greatly and I have been struggling to catch up in my classes. I am requesting to drop the course CISC 324, as I am unable to catch up on all the work I've missed in my current mental state.