Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing today to appeal to drop my failed courses this year in the past school year (fall term of 2014 and winter term of 2015), specifically the courses CISC 333 in the fall term, CISC 260 and CISC 332 in the winter term, and PHIL 111 in the full year term. I am appealing to drop them in order to be able to continue to study to complete my honours degree in Computing, but the reason I have to back up my appeal is that in August, my father suffered a stroke to the left side of his brain, causing the right side of his body to be completely paralyzed for a length of time. I spent time to take care of him and be by his side before I had to return to school in September, but throughout the year I took a huge chunk time travelling back and forth to try to help take care of him. My mother is the only other person who could take care of him, as we are his only family. I tried to focus and not let this distract me from my school work too much, but I was unable to stay unaffected by this, and this caused me to be stressed during this time. As well I've had to skip some classes at times to return home to Toronto. My dad has helped me write a letter to me inform you about the situation as well, and attached are proof and documents of his state of recovery over the past year. I do not try to place the blame on my dad's situation entirely, because I probably could have worked even harder during the times I was in Kingston. Unfortunately as well during the winter term my mother had to leave for Hong Kong to take care of her own mother and deal with her family's pressing matters, so I had to spend extra time taking care of my dad at home. I really do hope that this appeal can go through, because I am depending on this to be able to graduate with Bachelors in Computing with honours, something I've been working towards for the last three years; the two years prior I had no real direction in terms of academics, but now that I have been working towards this goal, I want to be able to complete what I started. As of this moment my dad has still not recovered entirely, as he is not able to go work full-time at the office, but he is in good hands and is expected to fully recover soon, and enough for me to not have to worry about his condition and health. Again, I understand my role in these failures, I should have better communicated my needs with my teachers, and as well asked for extensions and retakes on tests that I missed, and if in the future something similar happens (I do not hope it does), I will be able to handle the situation much better. Thank you for reading through my appeal, I hope I can return to Queen's in my sixth and final year to complete my Bachelors with Honours program, and finish what I started.
Regards,

Frederic Fontaine