Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Johanne Bénard,

My name is Hassan Aljohani and I am a 2nd year Life Sciences major here at Queen¿¿s University. I am writing to appeal the grade I received in PHYS 117 Course for Fall Semester and winter semester (6units). I believe there were situations that were beyond my control that contributed to my low grade, and had circumstances been more typical of a normal PHYS 117 Course I would have scored a much higher grade than the D that was posted.

As you know, I am an international student and last year was a very tough year mentally and emotionally. I finished my High School back home and I was one of the best students out there. I did my high school using Arabic and I was only takin English classes twice a week. When I got to Kingston, everything was new such as the language and the culture; also, I missed my family too much and no one was around to support. I had a hard time with English in school or even outside the school and this became worse when I failed the first midterm in PHYS 117 because I could not understand the questions and I was not allowed to bring a dictionary or even to get extra time. As a result, I was nervous scared and mentally not present, so I talked to my don about it and she advised me to contact Elizabeth. After that, I contacted Elizabeth Racine, Health, Counselling and Disability Services, and I was meeting with her once a week for the last 8 weeks of the winter term, going through Health Habits, Concentration, Managing Stress, use of Resources and exam writing which helped me to pass the course. If you look to my marks in PHYS 117 you will find that I was working hard and I got A+ in the assignments and the labs but the exams lowered my mark in the course. The other courses were affected too like Biology 102 and 103 but since most of the words were Latin, it was ok because my teacher back in high school asked us to memorize the words and the explanation for them. I was only translating and memorize which I believe caused me to get a bad mark in them because I took to much time translating, but PHYS 117 was a completely different language.

When I got home last Summer I bought some textbooks that uses English and Arabic which helped me this year. Also, my English is getting much better, so I can ask, email whenever I need help. Last May, I went to the library and asked about the resources and the told me there is a writing center which I did not know about and there are some workshops during the year and they gave me a booklet with all the resources here at Queen's. I really did not know about all of this and if I did know I will use for example the writing center for my Biology labs. Also, I have to mention that during last May a friend of mine was talking the tutoring service here at Queen's, which attract my attention so I asked him to explain. Now, I am using this service in some of my classes such as ECON 111/112


I would greatly appreciate it if you would look at my record at this year and see the difference. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

Hassan