Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I would like to request a late withdrawal without academic penalty from STAT 269. I struggled throughout winter semester with issues related to my mental well-being that precluded me from performing up to my academic potential.

At the beginning of the year me and my girlfriend of four years separated, which effectively demolished my support system by removing the one person I had been comfortable opening up to. I had never struggled with my own mental health before and I am normally the person that my friends come to with their issues, but rarely the other way around. As the winter term progressed my self esteem and sense of self worth plummeted as my anxiety about academic performance, my future, and even social situations rose to constantly uncomfortable levels. Most mornings I would wake up with a sore face and neck from grinding my teeth all night and lie in bed afraid to get up and begin my day. I would wake up in time for class and then stare at my ceiling for hours too unhappy and anxious to get up, until being hungry made my stomach hurt enough to get me out of bed. I began getting less and less sleep and my average went down to about 4-5 hours a night if not less. I would find myself up at 3 in the morning looking at myself in the mirror and telling my self I was worthless or a piece of st out loud repetitively and not even realizing what I was doing until I'd been at it for up to a minute. Because I was terrified of going home and being alone with myself I'd convince different people to go get drinks with me every night until I was going out to bars around 5 nights a week, and drinking at home the other two. I had quit smoking on the first day of classes, but picked it up again as I started drinking more and went right back to half a pack a day. I took whatever other drugs I could get my hands on to try and get out of my head for a couple hours. At my deepest point, I had entirely stopped going to class or even checking moodle and every day had become an exercise in substance abuse.

I realized that the self-medication of my mental problems had become the issue. My family has a rich history of depression and substance abuse and I knew the whole time that I was only exacerbating my problems but it took several months to start making the change. I slowly replaced my substance abuse with exercise until I was playing basketball (a sport I've never played before) and working out for up to four hours a day. I would play until the skin started coming off my feet and my knees and back hurt too much to continue, so that I'd be too tired to go out drinking and could fall asleep at a reasonable hour. As my sleep habits returned to relatively reasonable levels and I started eating correctly, my anxiety faded to manageable enough levels that I could start looking into how far I had fallen academically. My days became sitting for hours in cogro trying to catch up on my schoolwork, but I was too far behind in stats 269 to be able to pull my marks back up. I searched for tutors but got no responses and completely gave up on the course after spending a week not being able to make any sense of the material without adequate notes. I asked my mother to drop the course, but couldn't bring myself to explain my real issues because when she was struggling with her mental health it took me years to convince her to get help and I was ashamed of what I had done to deal with mine. She assumed that I was being lazy and told me to stop wasting her money on courses only to drop them so I gave up on asking. I caught up in my other three classes but couldn't get back on top of statistics.

I've worked up the courage to explain what my situation was to my parents and some of my friends and it's not a situation I plan to fall into again. I've been clean of every substance but alcohol for over two months now and my alcohol consumption has decreased to a reasonable level. My exercise habits have returned to my standard levels of 2-3 hours a day and my eating habits are back to healthy levels. Next year I plan to make full use of the services provided by queens both for academic success and mental balance. I have accommodations for ADHD and plan to visit a learning strategist counselor as well as make use of the peer support and varsity tutoring programs. My experience this year has taught me a valuable lesson about reaching out to people and being able to ask for help.