Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Xavier Fredericks
20174011

Appeal for Repudiation of Deadlines & Academic Probation Sanctions

Hello, my name is Xavier Fredericks. I was a fulltime student in the History Program of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Queens University from September 2019 through May 2022. First, I??d like to thank you for taking the time to consider this appeal, and I??m hopeful we can come to an understanding. We don??t know each other, but I hope to provide some insight into my situation over the last couple years. Attending Queen??s was a dream come true and I recognize the privilege of being able to attend this institution. It was never my intent to end up in the circumstance that I presently find myself. However, this appeal is part of the process of getting my life back on track.
I want to explain the cause of my poor academic performance at Queen??s. Since leaving Queen??s psychiatrists and therapists alike have diagnosed me with chronic, crippling depression, which compounded with my existing diagnosis of ADD. This depression evolved over time, but I now believe that the catalyst for its onset was the COVID-19 pandemic as well as my inner conflict with my sexuality. I believe that I am asexual and coming to terms with this during the pandemic was very difficult. I was not in a proper state of mind as the pandemic chugged on, and I began to lose sight of the future. I contemplated killing myself daily as I believed I had no hope for anything moving forward and that my sexual identity barred me from having companionship to look forward to later in life. I was too scared to seek the proper help and repeatedly convinced myself that I could right the ship on my own. I was wrong about that.
In Fall 2019 I entered Queen??s fresh and overjoyed at what the future held. Coming from the United States I was thrilled at the possibility of new perspectives and experiences different from my own. I intended to work just as hard as I did in high school to achieve my goal of attending law school. I had lofty dreams which acted as my beacon and motivated me to push on and do my best. My dream extended as far as where my potential career would have me settle down, and the family I would raise. During that early part of my education at Queen??s I was successful, and things were on track. I made friends, I stayed healthy, and although there was room for improvement, I did well academically. But while all this was happening, I harbored repressed insecurities. I had struggled with ADD most of my life which required additional help through primary and secondary school. I was often in highly competitive academic schools in which my peers simply ?got it?? and I would lag behind. I always perceived myself as being less intelligent than those around me. Despite achieving my goal of getting into a fantastic school like Queen??s, I still carried this weight with me. On top of this, I began to struggle with my sexual identity coming into Queen??s. Because of my ADD, the time I spent focused on studies and extracurriculars in secondary school left little time for me to even consider the lack of development of my sexual identity. I simply was too busy to notice that I wasn??t what I thought I was. However, at Queen??s for the first time, I was in an environment surrounded by people who were secure in their sexual identity, no matter what it was, whereas to me such things never really crossed my mind. I was able to ignore this weight by keeping myself distracted with my responsibilities. I attended class, I worked out and I spent a lot of time in the library. This structure allowed me to keep ??my life? on track despite the feelings within. In many ways I deluded myself, I told myself everything would be fine if I just kept my head down and grinded. I believed if I simply waited my sexuality would develop. I tried to base my happiness around my grades which at the time were good. I kept this faux happiness going up until the coronavirus had thoroughly interrupted our school year and I was forced to return home to Atlanta.
At home I continued to try and keep my head down and grind despite the chaos of the world at the time. However, my productivity at home simply wasn??t the same, and as such my academic performance took a hit. It was nothing drastic, but it is the reason why I ultimately chose to take the ??P? grades on my transcript. I wanted to preserve my GPA and I believed I could reset and perform far better than the solid Bs I would have likely received; these were the kinds of expectations I had for myself. I tried once again to take online classes over the summer but again I had issues focusing and once again I ended up drastically underperforming. I took this as a one-off and attempted to reset in the Fall, despite being forced online for the term. I nonetheless returned to Kingston for Fall 2020, enrolled in a full schedule of classes and zealously began the term. But as the first few weeks went on things turned for the worse in Kingston. COVID protocols shut down gyms and many of the resources I depended on to keep me balanced. On top of that we were largely unable to visit other households so the opportunity to network and study with others was taken from me.
As a result of all this I spent my time in my room, day by day, giving in to depression. It was as if every issue and insecurity I had was mixing together to further accelerate this depression. I contemplated past, present, and the future: What does the future matter if this was my experience in this pandemic? Will I be alone forever? What??s wrong with me? Why can??t I do anything? It??s very difficult for me to put into words how agonizing this was for me. I couldn??t picture myself in the future, I just woke up and day by day I would drown in my emotions. I contemplated taking my life every day because what would it matter? Did I even have a future? I didn??t think my life was worth anything on its own. What kept me going was the investment of others in me. The devastation I would wreak on my close friends and family would be irreparable should I take my life. I had enough reason to understand that even if I didn??t value my own life, there were people who did. So every day I kept on in this vicious cycle. I would tell myself I just needed time and that I could still complete my coursework if I just took a break. But the feelings never went away no matter how long I waited, and soon I found myself weeks behind in many classes. I didn??t contact anyone for help because I believed it was on me to rectify my mistakes the hard way. I saw the struggles that I had as issues with my own character that I just had to fight through, but I was unable to complete anything.
I dropped some classes to try and mitigate workload and see if that would change the situation, but this also did not address the main issue and thus I still could not progress. I thought about taking a break, perhaps I needed to just put school on hold. But I decided against it out of fear. Fear that I would be letting my housemates down and forcing them to find someone to fill my place in our decrepit house. Fear of missing out on my university experience already so tainted by the pandemic. Fear that law schools would look at my gaps in time and at the dropped classes with scrutiny that would prevent me from moving on. But most of all, the fear of how any person would perceive me, an issue that would drive me to make the decisions I did. Being black in the United States meant to me that I didn??t get the luxury of taking significant time to myself. Any hint of laid-back or laziness could result in being written off as a deadbeat especially in academic and professional spaces. I knew that despite the opportunities I was given; my issues with ADHD and my need for structure would put me at a disadvantage against the intuitive and adaptive minds of the spaces I was putting myself into. But with specific regards to the perception of others, I kept a façade. Despite not being as orderly as first-year I tried to keep the idea going that I was still high functioning. I sometimes shared classes with one of my housemates and would collaborate on certain assignments to keep the charade alive.
All of these things mounted on me and I cracked under the pressure. In addition to my academic responsibility I began to neglect myself even more. I stopped exercising, I stopped cleaning my room, the pride I had in having a neat, nice smelling, and tidy Leonard Hall single was gone. I ate horribly. The once open lines of communication I kept with my family began to break down. I wasn??t calling and they could barely get a hold of me as I withdrew further and further. I had my housemates who are fantastic people that I still love to this day, but even they couldn??t offer help for problems they couldn??t recognize. We were all supposed to be sitting and grinding in our rooms, right? That was not what I was doing and they didn??t know the depths of my depression and ongoing self-destruction.
House responsibilities I had also suffered to as well. I agreed at the beginning of August in 2020 that I would deal with Utilities and Wi-Fi; which meant calculating how much we, and our upstairs neighbors owed and sending it to Utilities Kingston and Bell. This simple task proved too much for me, as I did not do it. Consequently, I punished myself. I would pay for some of the monthly bills with my own, hard-earned money because I believed it was my fault and I should take responsibility somehow.
The cycle of the above-mentioned continued until the end of the Fall 2020 term. After looking at my then tarnished academic overview, I decided to try and recoup my losses. I saw it as another hiccup, just like the summer. I??ll go home, take my holiday break with no stress, and come back. I specifically remember thinking that if I just did well moving forward, I could make a case when I was applying later that the sudden improvement showed I was just having a ??rough semester.? I dropped my 6-unit core history seminar and my first-year politics class to try and mitigate the damage and decided to focus on filling my 200-level requirements for my degree. I knew I needed the core seminar to progress, but I believed if I took it in third year and fast-tracked my electives by taking courses year-round, I could still graduate on time, and worst-case scenario: take another year. In the winter I enrolled in enough 200-level classes to complete that portion of my degree and despite failing LAW 201 I attempted the Public and Constitutional Law course. My fresh start was in place and despite returning to Queen??s in the even gloomier Winter pandemic setting, I was determined to try and rectify my mistakes. On top of all this, gyms and intramurals restarted. My housemates and I formed a water polo team. I started booking the ARC, the structure was coming back. But this was all to no avail, I failed once again. Despite my plans, I still could not push through my emotional turmoil the above issues persisted, and I continued on stuck in this cycle. I would start off the term trying so hard to push, attending Zoom classes, submitting some assignments, but it would always fall apart. This became an even larger cycle that continued through 3rd year. Starting off the term hopeful and attentive, only to fall off and back into the depressive cycle. I couldn??t step away from school because of my fear, but I couldn??t force myself to participate in it either. This is when the academic related pressure really started to set in. I began to again think I was too stupid, that I was letting everyone down. I was aware of the now compounding thousands of dollars my family was wasting on me, more pressure to exacerbate the depression. On top of that, the ARC and intramurals were once again suspended, and again we were forced back into the confines of our house. The cycle continued, and I once again horribly failed the term.
With the announcement that Queen??s would return in-person in the fall I was overjoyed despite the devastation to my academic record. I told myself I??d go into Fall 2021, and it would be just like first year, except I just had no room for mistakes. Invigorated, I pushed on through the summer with that in mind, but like first year, the subconscious neglect of my own problems persisted. I had a knee injury that had been bothering me for almost 2 years, and despite now being able to get consistent treatment, I held off. I thought of how much it would cost my parents and weighed it against how much I was wasting at Queen??s, I decided I didn??t deserve it, I didn??t deserve to feel good. I deserved the pain and inconvenience it caused me.
When I returned to school in the Fall of 2021 I was once again hopeful, but at this point the cycle had cemented itself. Despite now having access to much of the structure from before, my ordeal fundamentally changed me, the issues that I would put on the backburner now were at the forefront of my mind. I once again could not move forward despite knowing what was at stake and that I had to in order to secure my future. I tried retaking many of the courses I failed to try and mitigate the damage yet again, but I couldn??t push through. The depression seemed integral to my being at this point and I once again fell back into the cycle unable to motivate myself to leave. But now I was scared to leave the house. I was scared of the shame of people in my classes that I was missing seeing me, I was scared of professors recognizing me as the black kid who was regularly missing class. I shut down once again and fell back into the pattern refusing to leave my room.
At the end of the term omicron became a global concern. It wreaked havoc on exams and resulted in Winter term being moved online for six weeks. And many on-campus services were once again halted. Realizing the familiarity of the position I was in, I decided to remain in Atlanta for 4 weeks to try and get my bearings. Dr. Greenfield, my Medieval Societies professor reached out to me and I partially explained my struggle. I told him of my struggle with my asexuality and the shame I felt I was bringing to my family. He was very generous and accommodating, and because of my status as a member of the Core Seminar, he offered me an opportunity to complete all of last term??s course work before reading week with a 20% late mark applied, by end of week 6. I was touched by this gesture and sought to prove that I was still a strong student despite my flaws. Things started off well in Winter 2022, I was making decent progress with courses and finding some balance at home, but I missed my housemates deeply and feared what I was losing in real university experience. But the story continued as before. I??m having trouble articulating how agonizingly frustrating this was, but my mental state dictated me, and I once again could not force myself to move forward. Despite explaining some of the story to my professor, despite openly coming out to my housemates and some friends as asexual, I couldn??t fix the problems within, and I fell off again. Dropping Medieval Societies and finally resigning myself to my failure.
I knew I would have to inform my parents eventually of what had transpired. So, I dissociated, for the remainder of the term. I believed I was too far gone. I began thinking of a favorable date to kill myself from time to time, but eventually deciding not to think about the future. So, I just went on, day by day, existing until it was time for me to return home, continuing to contemplate suicide until the day I finally came clean. I didn??t know what to expect, maybe I would be kicked out or tear a rift in the family, but when it came down to the wire my parents understood. They??re supporting me to this day as I continue to find my way forward. I??m currently home now, working to keep me balanced, and regularly receiving both therapy and antidepressant treatments. Progress has been made in the last few months, which is why I come to you now with this appeal.
Though this first submission is to ask to repeal the deadlines specifically for my requirement to withdraw for 1 year, I would like to make a huge request. That all failed classes from the Fall of 2020 onward be changed to dropped. As well as to repeal my academic probation status. I realize this may be the first request of this magnitude, but I truly feel that this must occur for me to move forward in life. I??ve suffered these last 2 years, and my unique circumstances have made it all the worse. I??ve prepared an academic plan with 2 primary pathways that I??ll get into. But those paths depend on whether or not your decision to grant my request would require me to stay at Queen??s or not. I realize you may not be comfortable granting a degree to me after all that will have happened, and that I understand, granting my request would me more appreciated in this circumstance as it would allow me to apply elsewhere without immediately being denied. However, if meeting my request necessitates my return to Queen??s then that is also an offer I would not refuse. Whatever decision is made I nonetheless thank you for your time. Attached you will find reports from my psychiatrist detailing the intricacies of my mental state and why I was unable to avoid this situation. Thank you.