Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

Within my first year of university at Queen??s University, I faced a number of emotional and mental obstacles that have made a major impact on my studies. Within first year of my studies, in second semester, I failed both Sociology and Classical Civilization. Unfortunately, within the time of when I was enrolled in these two classes I had been experiencing extreme levels of anxiety and depression while also dealing with the death of my grandfather as well as just finding out that my mother had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to her bones that is terminal. While all of this was occurring in my life, we also were told that we were not allowed to return to school as a result of the covid outbreak.

I have struggled with ADHD my entire life and was diagnosed at the age of 15. Luckily my diagnosis finally brought the availability and access to the medication that would help my ADHD daily and would aid my studies, as my studies were what was being affected the most by my ADHD. Without this medication I was never able to focus and no matter what I was doing. However, as I got older, I felt as though the level of mg that I was taking was no longer helping me as it used to and decided to up the amount that I was taking daily. This changed happened in august of 2020. However, I was not consistently taking them as we were in covid, and I felt like it was not necessary for me with how covid changed the amount of work that was needed from me as an online hybrid student. As I came to Queen??s University, this was no longer the case, and I knew that I would need the medication to regulate my schooling and my ability to focus on my work and within my classes. Unfortunately, when I started taking the newest dosage of my medication, with a combination of restarting using the medication and the fact that this was a whole new amount, it did more harm than good. I knew that it would most likely need a while to settle, and I would yet again have to get used to the side effects that came with it. These side effects include depression, anxiety, irritability, trouble sleeping, etc. I found I felt as though I needed to choose between being able to study and be able to focus on my work or feeling emotionless and anxious all of the time. Unfortunately, I continued to take the medication as I thought it was my only chance to make it through my studies. This caused me to fall into a very hard cycle of extreme depression. For weeks at a time, I barely left my bed and physically could not even get myself to eat anything let alone do my studies and/or drop any classes or ask for help. At this time, my family had moved from our family doctor by 7 hours. I made many attempts to have the dosage of my medication changed but it was not possible via phone and there was no way to get a new doctor with the Healthcare crisis. I have a past history with both anxiety and depression, but in previous years, I was surrounded by people that were by my side and were able to help me with my own mental being. While this time, especially with the fact that our school was not able to run classes and have people on campus, I felt completely alone.

My grandfather was the first person within my family that I had lost. Before his death I truly did not know what it was like to lose someone close to me. My grandfather was an amazing man that was always there for myself and my sister no matter how far. When we lost him, I did not know how to deal with the grief. I found I spend many days feeling angry at the world and not understanding why something like this would happen to someone so kind, that did so much more for other people than he would ever do for himself. I had a very hard time accepting grief and spend a large amount of time pushing it away instead of feeling the grief in order to be able to accept his death and become comfortable with the fact that he is gone. This also was a major factor in why my studies declined within my first year.

When it comes to my mother and her diagnosis, this truly was what was the hardest thing in my life. My mother is the most important person in my life. My parents got a divorce when I was two years old, and my mother raised my sister and myself almost entirely by herself. She made sure our entire lives that we knew that she did everything she could for us. She was at every single game, competition, awards event, speech reading, play, completely by herself. My father was never really present at times like these and some of my biggest life accomplishments, but I always knew that my mother would be smiling in the crowd every time without fail. She raised both my sister and I to work for everything that we got and how to be independent as she raised us alone. The year before my mother's diagnosis, she had been breaking ribs as easily as sneezing. We took her to all sorts of doctors and not a single one could figure out why this was happening until she had a bone marrow test. For almost two weeks, we had no idea how severe the cancer was and we had no idea how long she even had left in her life. This made me lose all motivation in what I was doing. All my mother has wanted was for me to set myself up for success, for me to go through university and do something that I love for the rest of my life, she is the reason that I was able to get myself to where I am now and better myself and my schooling now.

Within this last year, my studies and my grades have improved immensely, I have been able to keep up with my workload and hand in work that I am proud of within my classes. On top of this, I have found classes that interest me and what I want to do for the rest of my life. I now have a strong support system in place for when I am at school. I am no longer taking the medication and I have also spoken to someone about the grief that I was experiencing and how to better deal with it rather than isolating myself. I hope you understand how all of these life events happening at the same time would affect my mental well-being and see how I was able to turn my situation around in order to better focus on my studies.I am asking to please have these two courses dropped in order to greatly improve my GPA.

Thank you,

Katelyn Draper

20272269