Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dr. Jenn Stephenson
Associate Dean (Academic)
Queen’s University

Dear: Dean Stephenson

I am petitioning to drop MATH 387, MATH 384, and PHYS 315 (Fall 2023)

Throughout the Fall 2023 term, I grappled intensely with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and depression. These struggles were most pronounced at the beginning of the semester, significantly impacting my academic performance in the initial weeks. The challenges I faced in school, compounded by familial and financial stressors at home, led to a point where heightened anxiety resulted in ongoing insomnia throughout the term. With all these factors, it became increasingly difficult to commit the time and effort that my classes truly deserved. As a result, I found myself falling behind in my classes, having missed a collection of assignments. This setback led to a rapid decline in my understanding of the course content, making it increasingly challenging to progress. In an effort to address these issues, I initiated close collaboration with my professors starting in October. Together, we worked on devising strategies to regain lost ground in their respective classes. Simultaneously, I embarked on the process of securing accommodations for myself, aiming to provide additional support in aligning with my professors' advice. Alongside these academic efforts, I continued seeing a psychotherapist I had been working with and reached out to my healthcare professional to manage the mental health issues I was facing. I had hoped that these combined efforts would ease both the health and academic pressures I was experiencing.

The reason I am seeking permission to withdraw from only these courses is that, with the invaluable support of my professors, I believe I have managed to recover from the challenges I encountered at the beginning of the semester in some of my courses. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case for all my courses. Despite an improvement in the mental health struggles I was dealing with, I still found myself extremely overwhelmed, particularly due to the overall increase in workload I would need to complete to catch back up in all my classes. Along with this, for some of these courses, the accommodations I was putting in place would not be able to help recover the marks, meaning I was left struggling to catch up in a large amount of coursework, to a high enough degree that the assignments I did complete were able to offset the lost marks. I also ran into problems with one of my professors, where around the same time, they fell ill, meaning I was behind in their course, with limited access to them for guidance and help moving forward. Regrettably, because of this, it became increasingly unfeasible to sustain a satisfactory performance across multiple courses.

I refrained from dropping these courses for a couple of reasons. The first was overconfidence that if I worked hard enough throughout the rest of the term, I would be able to rectify all the problems that had occurred so far, even if, looking back, that wasn't the most reasonable decision. Another reason would be that beginning the accommodations process and discussing potential outcomes with professors took until very close to the final drop date, so up until that point, I was hoping to find a way to make the situation tenable with all my professors. As mentioned previously, this unfortunately wasn’t possible for some of the courses I was enrolled in. Lastly, because I was already in my fourth year and had a very set fifth-year course lineup in place. I believed that if I were to drop my courses, it would not only set me back this term but for the rest of my university career. Due to this, and some familial and financial stressors, I felt it was absolutely necessary to complete all my courses to avoid such a situation.

In reflection of the term, there were many things I didn't fully grasp, and I take full responsibility for this. I hadn't any prior understanding of how the accommodations system worked, and I wasn't fully aware of what utilizing them would accomplish. I have spent a great amount of time replanning my remaining courses and reducing the number of courses I am taking at once to ensure I have the required time and capacity to work on all my courses to the best of my ability. Along with this, my accommodations are in place going into the term and I have spent a significant amount of time better familiarizing myself with the academic resources Queens provides. I am fully committed to making sure to be in close contact with my professors throughout the term to ensure I am meeting all the course requirements of their courses. Finally, I am maintaining close contact with both the psychotherapist I have been seeing, as well as my general healthcare practitioner, to manage any health issues that may occur. I deeply believe that with all of these pieces in place, I will be very well situated to handle the rest of my academic career.

If you feel it is necessary, I would be happy to meet to discuss this situation further.

Thank you kindly for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Jake Wright