Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I was recently granted an appeal to drop two summer 2022 courses given a multitude of really horrid circumstances throughout the late spring and summer of last year. I also noted struggles moving into the fall 2011 term.

During April last year I found out I was pregnant and through the most difficult horrible journey of my life, decided to have an abortion and lose the child that I had and have infinite love for and can not bear the loss of. Moving forward in the summer, I was dealing with hospitalizations of my grandfather, hospitalizations and deaths of my partner's grandparents, as well as a very messy divorce in my family which included false criminal charges of abuse. All of these horribly difficult situations saw no end as I moved into the fall term and was charged with the care of my older sister, including making multiple anonymous calls to the police for suspected assault as I could hear her being thrown against a wall. (October and November 2022).

While dealing with these ongoing stressors, I was still attempting to cope with the loss of my child, and was relying heavily on drugs and alcohol to cope with the depression I was facing. I was unable to reach out and ask for mental health support, because that would have meant stopping the negative coping mechanism, and I was not in any way prepared to let go of the weed that I thought was keeping me sane. (It was only actually keeping me in bed.).

Due only to the grace of some of my teachers I was able to pass all but one class, CHEM 212. I was also unable to pass 60% of the assessments, as much of this relied on the weekly tutorial quizzes, which I was unable to attend in my mental state. The midterm took place the evening after I had to pick my sister up and let her stay in my student house in Kingston to heal from the bruises to her abdomen after being taken to the ground and kicked multiple times. In preparation for the exam, I emailed my professor asking if there was any way to reweighs assessments and put everything into my final, but this wasn't possible, and so instead of sleeping I stayed up for about 80 hours leading up to the exam studying. Of course, this only made my exam come out as jumbled incoherent half- thoughts, even though I knew the course content quite well.
This is why I am applying to rewrite the exam. I didn't finish 60% of course work, but I would have passed this course given different circumstances. If I can rewrite the exam and then be granted aegrotat standing on the bases of proving I do have the knowledge, then my entire degree won't be completely screwed up due to a horrible 2022 year.

I am also hoping that this gives an explanation to the poor grade in CHEM 312, where, even though I passed, I would have done a much better job in any other year. In fact, I would have done better in all of my courses, including those in which I received an A- and B-. These may have been an A+ and an A, but not this year.

I was also completely unaware that I was able to apply for academic consideration given these circumstances. I just had no clue that academic consideration applied here. I used my consideration during one occurrence of abuse against my sister, and while I had COVID, but genuinely didn't understand that there were resources for academic help in cases like these. Cases where the world piles load after load after load of crap on you one directly after another for months on end.

Anyways, it's 2023 now and things just can't be any worse than last year, so I am really hoping that something can be done regarding these courses. Thank you for your understanding.