Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Ethan Hewison
June 4, 2023

PETITION TO REQUEST TO WAIVE A REQUIREMENT TO WITHDRAW FOR ONE YEAR

Dr. Jenn Stephenson,

I am writing in petition of the recent decision made to have me withdraw from classes for the next year (affecting my fall academics for the fall 2023 and winter 2024 semesters). I understand that this decision is warranted considering my Academic standing at the end of my winter 2023 semester, and falls within the Queen??s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Academic Regulations, outlined in section 13.4. However, my fall 2022 and winter 2023 semesters at Queen??s were some of the most challenging times I've personally experienced, and I believe that there were some significant extenuating circumstances that lead to my poor performance in this year of academics for me.

I believe I am a very intelligent person with a lot of capability, however, I have always struggled a lot with school from a young age. I would do well in elementary, with my teachers recognizing me as an extremely capable child. Around the end of middle school and throughout high school I would begin to struggle more with my grades though. My difficulty with school has never been with understanding the content or grasping the concepts that were taught in class but has more to do with applying myself as a student. Often times I would get zeros on assignments, not because I did them poorly or could not do them but it would be because I just did not do them. I would usually procrastinate on my assignments until the last minute, becoming overwhelmed with the amount of work id have to do and just avoid it and take a zero. This would become more of a problem during online schooling around covid times, as I was no longer in class and struggle a lot with finding motivation for online schooling. Having school shift to purely on the computer made it feel much more like a job than an experience I could share with my friends and look forward to doing each day which made it difficult to do work on classes I already had little interest in. This was a significant reason why I decided to defer my acceptance to Queen??s for a year, as the 2021 - 2022 school year was still met with a lot of uncertainty around online schooling, and whether or not students would be able to attend in-person classes. What I did not expect was how much I would still struggle to do work at Queen??s even after covid restrictions had been lifted.

I applied to Queen??s Faculty of Arts and Sciences with the expectation of pursuing a degree in psychology. Psychology was never a huge passion of mine, but in my grade 12 year of high school I took a social studies course that contained material relating to psychology and I found it fairly interesting. I was planning on doing English but was unsure what kind of career I would end up in with a degree in that so I decided to pursue psychology instead as it seemed like it would make for a more stable future for me. Motivations changed quickly, however, after only a few weeks into my psych100 classes. The course material was a lot more science focused than I expected, and that's my fault for not doing more research into the Queen's psych100 course and overarching Bachelor of Arts psychology degree. I??m sure if I did I would have realized that this probably was not the right path for me and would have pursued English instead. In fact, in recent weeks of reflection I have come to realize that a lot of my problems with this recent school year for me could have been avoided had I been more proactive in my life. So, with my declined interest in psyc100 as a course, along with not feeling very enthusiastic about my electives, (especially pols110) my apathy towards assignments and grades began to grow. I did really enjoy film110, as well as gnds125 which I had in my second semester, however, I still found it difficult to do the assignments for these courses as I had so much anxiety around actually doing work with how many overdue assignments I had in other courses. I felt like anytime I would start to do work I would have to do a never-ending game of catch-up with how far I was behind in and my anxieties surrounding this couldn??t handle it and I would just shut down anytime I attempted to do some work. This was the point where I should have met with an academic advisor and sorted out a plan that could have put me back on track, and I thought about it at the time but I just felt like such a lost cause that I thought it wouldn??t even be possible to save me. This was one of the hardest parts for me because I really loved everything else I was doing at Queen??s. I enjoyed going to my lectures and learning more about my subjects despite not being in love with them, and would always be an avid participant in my tutorials answering my TA??s questions to the class and partaking in group activities. As far as the work that I would do, it was really just my psych labs as they were very short and easy and I would have one every week so it would just feel like routine for me. I also liked going to my labs and would have to do the pre-lab work before so I had more motivation that way to do the work. But when it came to bigger picture things like essays, my mega labs, and exams; I wouldn??t study, I wouldn??t work on my essays and I would flake on my mega labs. It all felt too big and daunting and was spending all this time on something to prove what I already knew. I would always let my anxiety win when it came to school work and I felt like such a lost cause because I knew that I was going to fail this year and felt like I couldn??t do anything about it. Everything would just feel so overwhelming, and I didn??t have any idea how to take things one step at a time to make things easier for me.

The year wasn??t all bad, but November through March was a particularly difficult time for me as I do struggle a lot with seasonal depression. I also had been ill on and off throughout the first two months of my fall semester, with what students like to call ??frosh flue? and things took a real turn for the worse in November when I suffered from an extremely bad case of strep throat. I was bedridden for about a week, losing close to 15 pounds and not doing much besides sleeping. I withdrew from classes for 10 days, going home to get support from my mother and missing my last week and a half of classes before fall exams. I knew I still had to do my psych exam though as it was in person and luckily I was feeling a bit better in time for it, but I had not studied at all between being sick and the general procrastinating I usually do. I fully skipped my pols110, phil 153, and socy122 exams because I felt like I would fail them and they were online which meant I wasn??t expected to show up in person for anything.

After such a terrible first semester, I really was not looking forward to coming back to school for my winter semester. I felt like I would be such a disappointment if I were to drop my courses and tell my parents the truth about how I was doing, and that If I tried really hard I would be able to bring my grades back and at least pass this year. I knew I didn??t want to continue pursuing psych as my major, and had no plans on pursuing any of my other courses as majors, so really I just wanted to pass this year and start over next year with English as my new focus. I really should have just dropped my courses though because I didn??t really know how a GPA system works in university, and knowing myself I should have expected that I wouldn??t be able to pass the year with how discouraged I already was. Scared of getting sick again like I was first semester, I became a bit of a shut-in, mostly just spending time in my room and not really seeing other people which really poorly affected my mental health. I would sleep for most of the day, go to my classes in the afternoon if I could get myself out of bed, and then go and walk around Kingston by myself if I felt like I needed some air or stay in my room and practice music to keep my mind off of things. In the end, I really just repeated my first semester which lead to where I am now.