Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

My name is Simon Doncaster. I want to thank you for considering my appeal and doing so within a timely manner given the circumstances around football and the start date. During my first year of academics at Queen’s, I faced many struggles that did not allow me to perform at my best academically. My first semester was a huge transition from high school, as I went from classes with 25 students in them and a personal connection to my teachers, to classes of 200+ in which the professor didn’t know my name in most of them. I also went from a football commitment of 6-10 hours a week to 35+ hours. In addition to the stress that came with having to balance that time commitment, there was also additional stress on me personally, as I was named a starter. This took my stress level from a manageable spot to a spot that was the backbone to a lot of issues for me academically. A typical day of practice for me in my first semester looked like this, 6am wake up, go to the arc to lift, shower and eat, go to classes, get on the bus to the stadium, early meetings, team meetings, practice, eat at the stadium, home by 10pm. During these days, it was very difficult for me to perform at an acceptable level academically, as the stress of trying to maintain my starting spot and know all my assignments, as well as watching good film to constantly improve my technique while staying in a good spot academically, got to be a lot both mentally and physically. These drastic changes in my academic life led me to struggle with my first semester, as I was in a spot that I didn’t know how to work through, and a spot I didn’t know how to ask for help with. After the end of football season during first semester, I was already in a bad enough spot academically to not be able to recover to the level I believe I could have been at. Following first semester’s poor academic performance, I thought I would be able to turn it around with less football commitments and a greater understanding of the requirements for my courses. I believed I was going to change it around for myself, however, I found myself still unable to do good academic work, as the stress was still getting to me from the football side and the anxiety from not performing well first semester led to a lack of sleep and subsequent lack of energy. This led to me not being able to perform at the level I should be capable of academically for the first part of semester two. Once the TA strike began, it became even worse for me, as I had access to less resources and getting marks back became a struggle, leading to more stress and anxiety on my end with a lack of acknowledgment on the resources available to me as I believed I could handle it on my own and work through everything by myself, which I now know to be incorrect. With the lack of marks received and increased anxiety towards academics, it led me into yet another hole that I could not recover from and led to my poor academic performance. Overall, I learned this year that university is quite a jump from high school and that if I need help with school, stress, or anxiety, there are resources available to me and it isn’t bad to use them to my full advantage in order to perform well academically and athletically.