Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Undergraduate Dean,

I am appealing to drop the course DEVS 221, held within the winter semester of the 2016 academic year.

Due to extenuating circumstances that are beyond my control, I have been unable to finish the course on time. On the night of December 31st 2015, my younger brother was hit by a train on the Rosedale train tracks in Toronto. Subsequently, he spent four months at Sunnybrook Hospital, with the majority of his time in the Intensive Care Unit. Understandably, this was an incredibly traumatic experience for my family and myself, as we watched my brother fight for his life. He underwent many life-threatening surgeries during this period, and every update was crucial. Such events are hard to put in words, but I knew that I needed to support him through his recovery.

To cope with my brother¿¿s accident, I attempted to spend as much time with my family as I could while still keeping up with school. I missed many classes this semester in part due to the amount of time I spent with my family in Toronto, as well I was emotionally unable to focus on schoolwork to the best of my ability. I met with a counselor at Queen¿¿s Student Counseling on January 28th with hope to receive advice about managing these new feelings of grief and intense anxiety. This appointment was very beneficial and ultimately ended up confirming my decision to carry out the semester at Queen¿¿s. However, I continued to return home to Toronto every weekend to visit my brother until the beginning of March. The result of my brother¿¿s accident severely impacted my schoolwork this semester, especially DEVS 221. The effect of traveling back and forth from Toronto to Kingston every week made my regular course load a struggle to maintain, reason as to why I fell behind in DEVS 221. As this is an online course, I found myself neglecting to keep up with the timeline, which translated into increasing and intense anxiety. The other four courses that I completed this semester were not as significantly affected because it was much easier to get in contact with my professors and keep up with the work. I met with Professor Lovelace on one occasion to discuss further steps upon explaining my circumstances and he was accommodating, however I was unable to complete the course DEVS 221.

It is because of circumstances that were out of my control that I am requesting to drop this course past the deadline. I am a student that enjoys all aspects of Queen¿¿s academic life, and can not afford to get an incomplete or a failure on my transcript, for I am planning to further by education by applying for a Master¿¿s Degree in the future. My family has plans to speak with a professional personal counselor over the summer to further the healing process of this traumatic experience. As well, I spoke with an academic advisor at the end of this past winter semester and have decided to retake DEVS 221 in the next school year. I am very interested in the course and am excited to complete it next year. Please let me know how to continue this process, as this is this first time I¿¿ve had to do this. Thank you for your consideration thus far and hope to speak with you soon.

Sincerely,

Jordan McConnell