Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean of studies,

I am appealing to drop the BIOL 102 course (Fall, 2015) due to an extenuating circumstance. On October 28th, my father was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and stage 4 glioblastoma, which required me to go back to Toronto. I was in Toronto for roughly 3 weeks, spending time in the hospital, as my father had to undergo surgery to remove the tumor. He is now undergoing radiation therapy for 6 weeks and chemotherapy for 6 months, which will continue to occupy time and stress, however is much more managable. I returned to Kingston on October 16th, and during my time in Toronto was minimally able to complete any work. I missed all of my lectures and lab portions in that time frame, however, tried to keep up with readings in Physics 104/106, and Chemistry 112. I had contacted my professors to receive extensions on assignment and a course plan to make up the missed work. Within 2 weeks of returning, I had caught up, to a considerable degree, on material in all my subjects, except biology. In other courses, I had to make up for readings, chemistry and multiple biology labs, lectures, and work done in math, chemistry and physics tutorials. I was not able to catch up with the content in biology as other courses required heavy time commitments to catch up, however, I was able to complete the biology lab reports, and have gotten feedback for them.The material that was taught in the remainder of my courses was much more difficult for me as I had no previous highschool knowledge about them, thus it required extensive time to learn and practice those topics. Specifically, the materials from week 7-11 in chemistry, psychology, and physics was completely new to me, thus my priority was set on learning the difficult and new material. As my circumstance caused me to miss a significantly long period of time, it was difficult to catch up in every subject, and my academic performance has been affected in all my courses- specifically biology. The psychological stress, paired with long periods of absence has hindered my performance in this course.

I plan on pursuing as a life sciences major next year, which states that taking biology 102 is high recommended. I have taken AP biology in high school, and have AP credit transfer at Queen's. As I took AP biology in grade 11, I have learned the course material, however it requires heavy refreshing . Upon return to Toronto, my family is undergoing counselling to allow us to become more adept to the arising situation, and will help us cope. In addition, I plan on using student services to set up regular appointments with a counsellor who can help me while I continue my studies next term. Next term, I plan on continuing with 5 courses and biology 103. I plan on reviewing the BIOL 102 material over the break to ensure my performance in BIOL 103 is not greatly hindered. I have spoken to an academic counsellor, who is aware of my situation as I had connected her immediately following the initial diagnosis, and have spoken to her in regards of my plan of action.

Thank you for your consideration,

Nazgol Kafaei Shahbaz