Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom It May Concern:

With this letter I hope to clarify and further explain my extenuating circumstances, which, I believe, have affected my ability to add a course to my schedule within the expected timeline.


At the beginning of September my father, who is my family's only source of income, was laid off due to the issues within the oil sands in Alberta where he worked as a civil engineer. This was incredibly difficult to deal with and in addition to this my parents separated recently and I have had a lot of trouble dealing with that. As I attempted to get organized within the past few weeks, without the resources I was very used to relying on I did not attend many of my classes and did not realize how difficult I found my environmental science class until I attended the three hour lecture on the 15th. I dropped the course on the 19th but did not find a course to replace it with on time and missed the deadline by 10 minutes.

As a second year student, I am living completely on my own for the first time and having to do this with less help financially from my parents has been quite challenging. These first few weeks have been very hard on me mentally and I have not been as organized as I usually am which is why I was unaware of the drop deadline and assumed we had the same deadline as last year (22nd of September) to drop and add courses. I have also decided on what I would like my major to be and need to take DEVS100 in order to major in global development but am open to taking any course as I do not think I will be able to take 6 courses next semester and do not want to fall even more behind.

In light of the issues I am currently facing I would ask that the committee take my circumstances into consideration and allow me to add a course into my schedule although the deadline has passed.



Sincerely,

Fatima Osman Aden