Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I am writing this letter to you because I wanted to make a request to add two new courses to my timetable despite it currently being passed the deadline to add new courses. To begin, the reason I did not add these two courses earlier in the term (during the appropriate time) is that I was going through a traumatic experience in my personal life. This consisted of a severe family tragedy that I still have not finished healing from. This was also combined with a recent inducement of serious anxiety that prevented me from even attending class in the first couple of weeks of the semester. I felt too anxious to attend class, partake in activities that I would have thoroughly enjoyed before, and even perform common daily tasks. As a result of this, I was not in the right headspace to analyze my courses and timetable and make adjustments accordingly during the appropriate time to add/drop courses. Now, I am hoping to remove two courses from my timetable, and to add two other courses that I feel I would perform much better in, while also being compatible with my timetable. The two courses I would like to drop would be Pols 385 and Pols 465. This would allow me to successfully add (1) Econ 250 and (2) Pols 415, which are the classes I would much rather participate in. In addition, I have taken the time to reach out to the different professors for both Econ 250 and Pols 415, and they both said they would be happy to have me join their courses, despite joining late in the semester. Also, I was previously in Econ 250 a couple of years ago, but unfortunately needed to drop it in order to resolve some timetable issues, so I am already familiar with the content that has been covered thus far in that course so far. Moreover, being in econ 250 is much more preferable to me because of my anxiety, as Econ 250 is much more individualized with tests and assignments being assigned on an individual basis, whereas Pols 385 requires you to constantly work on group assignments and tutorials, which greatly exacerbates my anxiety. Finally, this is my last semester of my undergraduate degree and I hope to attend law school next year, so these course adjustments would be greatly appreciated to ensure I can successfully finish off my undergraduate career with my favoured classes and the best GPA possible. Thank you for your consideration.

Josh. M