Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may be concerned,

I am writing this email to let you know I would like to apply for an extension of the IN Grade and a Credit Standing (CR) for the 2022Winter semester GPHY 240. I have submitted all outstanding coursework today, and the instructor Christen Grossutti agreed to update my grade. Therefore, she would like to support my appeal to let her submit grade changes for outstanding work.

I passed the deadline of September 15, 2022, due to psychological challenges and family problems. In late July, extenuating circumstances were out of my control. There has been a severe situational depression since middle and late July. At that time, my parents were encountering financial crises and psychological problems. They are frontier workers who work for the Chinese government at the border and community; they were quarantined for nearly 200 days in the past 12 months due to the China Lockdown policy. Their economic situation is collapsing because China's market is going down, so they are very stressed and facing a financial crisis. But my international student tuition fee is very high, and living expenses also need their money, so they have no choice but borrow money from others.

Meanwhile, they have neither been to Canada nor been to a university, so they do not understand what I am facing at a Canadian university. They continually blamed and criticized me for expressing their harsh voice, like let me be back to China. Meanwhile, I faced painful racial discrimination in Kingston, which made me suffer trauma in late July. Due to the differences and barriers in culture and language, the experience of systematic bias is hard to cure others and makes me feel very upset and helpless. In both of these two events, I was in a severe situational depression which directly impacted my mental health and academic performance, making me cannot concentrate attention on focusing on the coursework, especially GPHY 240 is a research methods course; all assignments are essays that need continuing concentration to write. These two events and related situational depression directly induced me to drop two summer semester courses in late July, making me lose more than 10,000 CAD international student tuition fee because I was primarily affected by it and passed the deadline for dropping the course without finical penalties. In conclusion, psychological challenges and family problems cost me a lot of energy, time and money, directly impact my condition for a period and affect my academic performance.

However, I spent two months recovering to normal and finding a relatively good psychological condition. My family, friends, counsellor and psychological professional helped and supported me to make me feel better. So, I have done all the required assignments for the GPHY 240. Professor Christine Grossutti would like to support me in appealing to submit a grade change for the course.