Hi there everyone,
I was looking for some advice on whether/ how to ask for special consideration due to mental health issues for my honours year. I'm finishing up my thesis right now, but I've ended up having to turn it in a week over the due date. My story is that I moved from Perth to Sydney a year ago, because I didn't like Perth (no offense WA people, but I'm a big city person), and wanted to transfer uni's for honours. I ended up doing that but had a rough time with it.
I transfered from a non-Go8 to a Go8 uni and found that people, including my supervisor, turned their noses up to where I had gone before. Dealing with that, and not having many friends because I was in a new city was really hard. I ended up getting really depressed in the middle of this year. As in I couldn't get out of bed and was feeling suicidal. I managed to get myself together halfway through the year, but some of my grades to a bit of dip, and it's set me behind on writing my thesis, because you know, you can't get fieldwork done if you can't get out of bed. On top of that I've felt incredibly tired the whole year, and I think honestly feeling pretty burnt out because, of all the hard work I did throughout undergrad (got great grades, and worked a few jobs to pay my way through it).
I brought it up with my supervisor as soon as I realised I probably wouldn't finish on time, and asked whether I should have been looking at getting an extension. He thought I would finish on time and said I didn't need an extension, but obviously I haven't finished on time. I didn't bring up mental health stuff with him basically, because I don't like drawing attention to myself, and am a little bit worried about discrimination against mental health problems, or people waving me off because I'm a transfer student from a 'second rate uni', or that I got my self into this to begin with by deciding to move and transfer. Or just a general lack of sympathy because I often think people don't who don't have problems with depression realize just how bad, and physically debilitating it can be.
I'll probably only receive a 3-3.5% penalty off of my thesis mark for turning it in late, but considering how bad I was during the middle of this year, I don't feel any marks off for lateness are fair. I was trying my best, but I'm not sure standing up for myself is worth it.
Does anyone have advice?
