Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: My name is Oliver Jacobs. I am a third-year student in the Honours Psychology program. I am appealing my final grade of C+ in Bio102 during the Fall term, 2016. My overall GPA without that grade is about a 3.7.

My declining mental health over the past year culminated in a diagnosis of depression this past summer and the subsequent start of antidepressant medication. During the Fall term, my medications were adjusted, which further affected me. Struggling with my mental health has been a real challenge over the last few years, but never before had it become as intrusive on my academic performance as it did last term. This was particularly the case for this biology course.

On paper, the biology course should have been no problem (even though I had not completed Grade 12 biology). I had A grades in third-year biopsychology courses which covered many aspects of microbiology. As well, my grades had started off well in first year and had only been on the rise since, giving me a bit of a confidence boost at least in something.

However, when it came to Bio102, I learned the hard way that regardless of your potential to do well in a course, if you cannot be motivated to apply yourself you will do poorly. A pretty simple lesson, but when a wave of anhedonia takes over, any effort becomes next to impossible. It really did not help that there were over 30 online quizzes, tests, and assignments requiring constant motivation and alertness. Even just staying on top of my organization in such a chaotic class became next to impossible, given the challenge of dealing with my mental health and adjusting to new medications.

Another coupling factor in my inability to reach out was that I was a third year taking a first year course, thus increasing my isolation. No doubt it was already unhelpful too when I was

already struggling so hard to reach out to anybody in the first place, let alone strangers. But I was trying The medication took a bit of time but over the course of term it seemed to have a beneficial effect combined with reaching out to mental health resources offered to students here as well as back home in Toronto. I thought things were going better until exam season struck. I relapsed in some of my positive improvements that I've taken towards treating my mental health. On top of school, it seemed like everything socially was going wrong, everything was hopeless, and nothing really matter. I was fighting to do well for my exams though and though I had carved out a hole in the world for just myself during this time, it allowed me to get prepared for my exams; or so I thought.

Probably the most ironic part of panicking during my exams was that I had read about the symptoms before I had ever experienced it so profoundly myself. Too much cortisol flowing through your body and your working memory is severely degraded reducing your recall, your ability to juggle items in your head, and your ability to plan accordingly to answer a question. During the Bio102 exam, my heart was racing and my galvanic responses in my palms(sweating) were off the charts making my hand shake and my pen fall out of hand. Today, I think of the Dunning- Kruger effect wherein I could have known so little that I didn't even realize I knew so little. Furthermore, I was freaking out because it was the only mark in which I didn't intimately know the cutoffs required for the grade letter I aimed for because so many marks had not been returned. Even in January almost two months after my exam, I was still unable to get all of the 35+ grades compiling my mark after emailing the professor in charge. I met with Professor Young, Associate Head of the Department of Biology, but he was unable to help me.

That day and this course feel like a mountain of weight adding to a tremendous amount of other problems getting in the way of my recovery from mental health problems. It was difficult to reach out for help in the first place and it has taken me a long time to get to this point... So I ask, please could you help me out.