Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: The reason why I am appealing my grades for Chem 281 and Anat 215 is because I strongly believe that if it were not for my circumstances, I would have done substantially better. Now, you may be thinking that this is an awfully late time to appeal for courses from last semester. The reason why I have waited until now to appeal my grades is because I wanted to see if there would be a difference in my performance after taking care of my circumstances from first semester.

Throughout the duration of first semester, I have been experiencing waves of nausea, headaches, and had difficulty focusing while I studied and during lectures. My immune system must have been in bad condition because I would get colds frequently.

I was fairly fine in September. However, the beginning of October is when I started experiencing my nausea and headaches. With all of this going on in my life, it was quite easy for me to fall behind. Of course, you may be thinking that I should have seen a doctor as soon as I noticed that I was feeling nausea and getting problematic headaches at least twice a week. However, at the time, I thought it was pointless. I thought it would go away and I thought my nausea and headaches would cease if I took some medicine. A semester is three months and the time flies by. I did notice my studying was being hindered, but I believed that I could still cope with my health problems and do reasonably well. However, this caused me sleep less than most of my peers as I would spend the time I lost studying.

This lack of sleep made it easy for me to fall asleep during lectures. I realized a bit too late that staying up to study and thus, not being able to pay attention to the best of my ability in lecture was actually counter-productive.

Fortunately, my professors for Chem 281 and Anat 215 were very understanding. I was quite visibly ill around week 8-9 and thus, I was able to write my Chemistry midterm and Anatomy block test a bit later. In spite of writing them later, there was so much time that was lost due to being ill that I did quite poorly on them.

This time lost was also reflected on my final exams. Throughout my first semester I strongly believed that I would be able to pull through and do well on finals. I would have never thought I could have done as poorly as I did. I do not want to sound arrogant, but I have always believed myself to be a strong student. However, first semester absolutely crushed me. One of my courses was a two-semester course (Phgy 214) and I ended up dropping it.

Another course I was taking was Stat 263. I was feeling very sick the day of the exam and so my professor let me write the exam during second semester. I did quite poorly on the exam and ended up with a grade of 60. I would also like to appeal this course for a CR, but I¿¿m not sure if I can because I wrote the exam in second semester. During the exam, I found that it took me a long time to recall how to do each question- which makes sense because I learned the material long ago.

I spent my December break reflecting and figuring out where I went wrong. I finally decided to go see a doctor. I saw my family doctor thinking that I may have some sort of terminal illness. However, when I spoke with my family doctor, instead of running medical tests, she just asked me a number of questions to figure out why I was experiencing nausea, headaches, and getting colds.
According to her, it is likely that the nausea and headaches are stress-induced. She recommended that I find ways to relieve stress, eat smaller more frequent meals, and avoid eating fruit for breakfast. She also prescribed me medicine to take instead of Tylenol for my headaches.
Thinking back, the stress may have been triggered by two of my close friends, who are also housemates, disliking each other. We were all very close in first year and they were a major part of my support group. Their dislike for each other put me in an awkward position.

This semester, I am doing a lot better in all my courses. I don¿¿t get many headaches and I haven¿¿t felt any nausea. I did get a cold during the beginning of second semester, but that is pretty much it. It is quite clear that the nausea and headaches did take a toll on my ability to learn the material last semester since this semester has the same workload and I¿¿m doing so much better.

My last semester grades will forever look bizarre on my transcript in comparison to my grades from first year and this semester.

I would like to thank you for taking your time to read this. I really appreciate that there is a system in place to ensure that the futures of students like myself are not compromised due to circumstances beyond their control.

Thank you,
Melani