Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing to drop three courses, Math 111, Phys 117, and FILM 110, and to receive credit standing in Math 121. The reason I am appealing is due to extenuating circumstances involving my mental health which caused a large drop in my academic performance between the fall term and the winter term. I have had issues with anxiety related to school work in the past but throughout the fall term I channeled that anxiety productively and managed to achieve respectable grades in my classes. That changed during the winter term. My anxiety that I had kept in check became unmanageable and negatively impacted my ability to perform academically. I began to have difficulty concentrating on my class work whereas at the start of the year focus came to me with relative ease. In class I would have difficulty maintaining my focus for an entire lesson which lead to me missing out on important details. Longer projects that required extended periods of focus over longer periods of time became very challenging and I started to fall behind. I began to have difficulty sleeping which was extremely detrimental to my academic performance because I was often too tired in class to focus properly. Sometimes I would miss class altogether because when I finally fell asleep I would be early in the morning and I would end up sleeping through class. I also suffered from a loss of appetite which left me with low energy levels further inhibiting my ability to concentrate. Furthermore, I was so anxious about my schoolwork and what was happening to me that I became withdrawn from friends and spent most of my time in my room. I started experiencing these symptoms in January and because my anxiety stems from my performance in school it continued to worsen as I performed worse academically. Because of the general nature of my symptoms all of my course work was affected. I began to feel that there was no way for me to catch up on my work. The one exception to this trend was in economics where I managed to maintain my level of achievement in the fall term during the winter term. There were two reasons for this. First, my friend who lived next to me in residence was in my economics assignment group and because he was unavoidable and needed my help for assignments he put pressure on me to do good work. The second reason is that I knew most of the course material from the high school economics course I had taken in the previous years. Apart from that exception, my performance was drastically hindered which is why I am submitting this appeal.

I have been seeing a counsellor and have a plan to remedy this situation going forward. I would sincerely appreciate your help as I know that these marks do not reflect my academic ability and this has been a really difficult and disappointing year for me.