Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I've always known that I would want to do an exchange program in university. As a kid growing up, and as a teenager moving through high school, my family made efforts to have the larger world be part of stories, vacations, books/music/movies, and dinner table discussions that we all would engage with together. We talked about world events, watched foreign films, and I would hear many tales from my father who went to Nepal on exchange, my mother who went to Kenya on exchange, and my grandmother who has been seemingly everywhere. This family rhetoric had the effect on me of giving rise to an acute interest towards history in high school. An interest that, helped along by a few fantastic teachers, grew into a passion about Environmentalism and Global Development Studies, which I am now majoring and minoring in respectively.
Because of all this, I was pretty upset when I found out that I had been put on a waitlist for the bilateral exchange program, with no knowledge of whether I would be accepted or not. Due to the importance of exchange to me, I decided that I would attempt to go through independent programs to try to make something work. That 'something' came in the form of the School for International Training (SIT), which was the organization that took my mother to Kenya and my father to Nepal in the 80s. This organization has been operating for over 50 years with the mission statement (which can be found on their website), SIT educates future scholars and professionals in diverse settings to address the most critical global issues in pursuit of a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world.
The upcoming fall 2023 semester is when I would want to be abroad, and SIT is offering two programs that seem perfect for me. I only wish to attend one of these programs, but either would be incredible, so I want to apply for both to increase my chances of getting into at least one of them. The programs are:


'Samoa - Social and Environmental Change in Oceania: Discover the social, economic, and political impacts of globalization, westernization, and climate change in Oceania'; and 'Tanzania - Wildlife Conservation and Political Ecology: Explore the balance between ecological concerns and socioeconomic objectives in the vast wilderness expanses of northern Tanzania.'


As I continue my studies in ENSC and DEVS, an increasing number of my courses all point to the importance of a diversified education, both in academia and experience, and I feel these programs would be perfect for this. The opportunity that either of these programs would offer me is once in a lifetime; they would do wonders for my understanding of cultural and indigenous knowledge/importance outside of our typical western bounds, something that I feel would drastically improve my knowledge and application abilities.
The experience would also encourage me to return to Queen's with a newly-invigorated drive towards my studies. Obtaining a higher grasp on the state of some international communities would help me increase my level of thinking and comprehension when it comes to global issues; especially concerning developing areas.