Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Request credit (CR) standing in a course or courses:

I would like to request that my credit standing in two of my first year courses: Psych 100, in which I attained a D+, and SOC 122, which I finished with a D. During the winter semester of 2015 last year, I received devastating news. On February 1st, a few days after her eighteenth birthday, one of my best friends passed away from meningitis. Her passing was very sudden and tragic and as I sit here typing this appeal I still feel as if there is a weight on my chest as I dwell over her loss. I am fortunate enough to still have all four grandparents and had, prior to this loss, never experienced the death of someone close to me. To lose such a lively and vibrant person in my life was extremely difficult. I can not quite put into words what it truly was like to lose her, but there is not an hour that goes by where I do not think about or miss her. Her sudden death slumped me into a numbness, a constant haze that I was living in a dream. I felt so much guilt regarding our lack of contact in the weeks before her passing. I would constantly obsess over what I could have done to have shown her how much I loved her. This numbness led me to abstain from my studies as I could not sit in a quiet room without hearing her voice or seeing her face in my head. I lost sight of the value of my own life, seeing as death was inevitable. I knew that my grades were being affected, yet at the time I was so consumed by my sorrow that I could not bring myself to do anything about it. I have a long history of depression and in those months I had to increase my dosage of Citalopram and Lorazepam just to get out of bed in the morning, which I rarely did. Thankfully I managed to get extensions on several papers and assignments, keeping me some what up to date with the expected curriculum of my classes. I stopped attending class and spend most of my days sleeping or crying. Around exam time, I focussed mainly on the three courses that had interested me the most during the year, namely HIST 122, DEVS 100 and POLS 110. Although my focus and attention span was extremely lacking, I somehow managed to attain reasonable marks in those courses. However, despite an attempt to study for Psychology and Sociology, my marks reflected my lack of academic attention in the winter term. It was very difficult to keep up with the readings and assignments assigned in all my courses with a numb brain and no drive, but sociology and psychology, the two courses that did not come as naturally to me, proved to be the most difficult. I constantly found myself questioning what the point was to sit in a library and study when I could pass away tomorrow and have nothing to show for my short life of missed opportunities. This mindset accompanied me all through the second term and when my exams ended I went home to help my good friend cope with the imminent passing of her mother who, on May 5th, passed away from fourth stage lung, lymph node cancer. I digress from this sad topic and would like to focus on the following, I am a good student and very academically inclined. Since returning to queens I have joined Model Un and Queens Model Parliament and have been keeping up with all my courses. The grades that I attained last year in psychology and sociology are inaccurate portrayals of my scholastic abilities, which I will prove throughout the remainder of my time attending Queens University.