Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I, Natalie Martin, have been extremely sick for over 2 weeks. Due to this, I have been unable to attend tutorials during this time, unable to complete most of my work on time, and unable to do work in general. As of the morning of October 30th, I started feeling ill including brain fog, cold-like symptoms, and extreme lethargy and fatigue. As a student who wanted to drop POLS261 quite last minute before the drop date without academic penalty, this illness affected my ability to contact an academic advisor and unable to figure out how to drop a course. As a student with disability, I require extra help with tasks such as these, to get clarification about the ramifications associated with dropping the course. I have a doctor's note and prescriptions I received on the 8th of November. I was unable to contact a doctor as I do not have a doctor readily available to me in Kingston, and Student Wellness services appointments continued to fill up right when I would call. This prevented me from being able to get a diagnosis or medication to be able to treat it. When I did contact my doctor, I was prescribed an antibiotic called Azithromycin. It was suspected that I have mononucleosis. I was also given a doctor's note that stated that I should abstain from my studies from the 8th-14th as I rest and recover. A few days later, I also went to Hotel Dieu and received a prescription of Dexamethasone to treat the swelling in my throat. As I have no doctor in Kingston, and limited access to Student Wellness due to the overwhelming amount of sick students, and my inability to stay awake for a long period of time,I was unable to contact an Academic Advisor in time for the November 1st 2022 drop period without academic penalty. Going to a walk-in clinic before this time would have been impossible due to travel reasons. I live considerably far and this illness made me lethargic and lightheaded which meant I could not walk or expose other people to illness on public transportation. The stress of getting diagnosed, getting better, taking medication, and trying to keep up with my studies at the same time has also prevented me from being able to speak to an academic advisor and drop my class in time. This course is of no interest to me, and I need the extra time to spend on my other courses to work on my GPA. I have also not been able to keep up with this fast-pace course during the time of my illness and would perform very poorly. I would like to drop the course in order to better my GPA for now, and work on my courses before retaking this course next year. Thank you so much, and look forward to hearing back about my appeal.