Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Board of Studies,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to respectfully request your permission for a credit standing in a course. As a student at Queen's, I have always been impressed by the level of commitment and dedication shown by the faculty and staff, and I am hopeful that you will be able to help me with my current situation.

During the Fall 2022 semester, I took the course STATS 263, and unfortunately, I was not able to finish with a good mark due to some personal issues that I experienced during that time. Specifically, the decline of my grandfather's health and eventually his passing. This heavily impacted my ability to keep up with my coursework as I spent many weekends traveling from Kingston to Markham to spend the limited time that my grandfather had left in September into early October. I tried my best to catch up, but the combination of my grief and the demands of the course proved to be too much.

As a result, I have received a grade of D+ for STATS 263, as a student under the computing faculty at Queen's one of the requirements for students going into their second year is a 2.6 GPA. I figured that since I still had a semester left to improve my GPA that it would not be the end of the world. But another issue resulted in me only having 4 courses in the winter semester (could not get off the waitlist for one of my courses). Despite these issues, I tried my best to obtain the best mark possible in my other courses but my mark in stats and not having a 5th course has dropped my GPA significantly.

I am hoping that you can grant me a credit standing for STATS 263, which will allow me to keep my GPA above the 2.6 threshold and progress into my second year at Queen's. I have been working hard to improve my academic performance and have done well in my other courses, which I hope demonstrates my commitment to my education.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate your help in this matter and look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Sincerely,

John Liu


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION SENT IN VIA EMAIL:

Dear Academic Petition Office,

Thank you for your prompt response, and I apologize for the lack of explanation in my original petition. I appreciate the opportunity to provide more information regarding the circumstances surrounding my grade in STATS 263.

In retrospect, I recognize that STATS 263 was a challenging course for me due to the fact that it was my first statistics course, and struggled with it even before my grandfather passed away. I found the subject matter to be complex and difficult to grasp. In addition, the weighting of the course, with weekly quizzes and a term test each accounting for only 10% of the final grade, placed a heavy emphasis on the final exam, which accounted for 80% of the total mark. Unlike my other courses where they are a lot more distributed among the entire coursework.

Once I got back to Kingston after my grandfather's funeral, I could not find myself getting out of bed in the morning let alone going to class. I was stuck in my dorm room for days and only came out when I was too hungry and had to find something to eat. This was the first time had to deal with grief without my parents, so I self-destructed. Fortunately for me, I made amazing friends during orientation week, and once I got back on my feet, I spent many hours and late nights studying with them to help me catch up in the week that I had been absent. Unfortunately for me, I was the only person in my friend group that was in STATS that semester. All of them were either taking it during the winter or not at all so they could not help me there.

Another reason is my experience that I had in CISC and MATH courses, throughout high school, I took most of the mathematics courses and all of the coding courses provided in the Ontario curriculum, I already had experience in these areas which made catching up a lot easier than catching up in STATS which again was my first statistics course that I have taken. Although I was catching up in my other courses, I fell further behind in STATS which then became this bubble of stress and anxiety in my head whenever I thought about it. While I did my best to stay on top of the material, the weight of the final exam, combined with the difficulty of the subject matter, made it difficult for me to achieve a satisfactory grade.

I would like to reiterate my desire to succeed in my studies at Queen's University. I am hopeful that the additional information I have provided will give you a better understanding of my situation.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

John Liu