Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Dorit Naaman,

I am petitioning to drop CISC 465 (Winter, 2025), ECON 112 (Winter, 2025) and EMPR 270 (Winter, 2025). In the first semester of the 2024-2025 school year, I had reached a breaking point towards the end of the semester due to the high level of pressure my parents had put on me to graduate. This pressure and the shame of being a sixth year culminated in an extreme depression making it difficult to fulfil academic and personal obligations. I did however manage to scrape by until I fell into substance addiction in the beginning of the winter semester. Once I became addicted to drugs there was no going back and it consumed all aspects of my life. In the beginning of first semester, I chose to take a heavy winter course load (6 courses) as a means to graduate faster. This only hindered me further however I did not lighten my course load because it was not fully apparent that I would fail these courses until after my exams. Doing the math, I needed around 80% on the exams to pass these courses. The drugs had made my performance abysmal during the term and my mental illness progressed to the point that I had fallen into delusions that I could achieve the necessary marks on the exams despite my poor performance during the term. Now that I am clean I can see how foolish that was. I did end up dropping one of my courses that winter but that was only because I knew my final mark before exam season and knew there was no salvaging it. The compulsive substance abuse due to my addiction led to extreme mental illness destroying my ability to make sound judgements and rational decisions. Looking back, I should have taken that semester off however all that can be done now is a potential late drop to salvage my cumulative GPA. Following the disastrous winter term I did end up seeking professional help from my doctor and am now clean. I also decided to graduate with a 3 year general computing degree instead of the 4 year Honours degree so that I could take a break and evaluate my goals for the future. My future plan is to continue check-ins with my doctor and complete the rest of my 4 year degree on a part-time basis so that I don’t repeat the same mistakes I mentioned above. I am petitioning for these late drops so that these irrational decisions I made while being mentally unsound don’t follow me around for the remainder of my academic tenure as they are not reflective of who I really am but are rather a snapshot of one of the lowest moments of my life. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Isaac Noori.