Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: June 15, 2016

Office of the Associate Dean (Studies)
Student Services, First Floor Dunning Hall
Queen's University

To Dr. Johanne Bénard:


I am writing to you to request an appeal to drop a course past the academic deadline. Specifically, I wish to drop CISC 101 from my current schedule, and I hope that my inability to complete the course will not negatively impact my academic standing or any short-to-medium term career goals I have.

As of Monday, June 6, 2016 (about a week prior to submitting this appeal), I was on schedule for completing this course and had a good academic standing in the class. As of that Monday, my average assignment grade (out of 4 assignments) was 81.25 and my average quiz grade (out of 3 quizzes) was 73.33. I only state these as an indicator of my continued effort in the course up to that point.

On that same Monday I was scheduled for a last-minute interview with a firm which would give the me the chance to enhance my career opportunities through relevant work experience and an exceptional network of industry contacts. I am happy to say that I received an offer to work at the firm this summer, however that would unfortunately entail me having to relocate (last-minute) away from my hometown. This internship would require me to bring my own laptop to work, which was a problem given that I had been solely using my family desktop computer for any computer-activities up to that point (including my course deliverables in CISC 101) and my only laptop was in the repair-shop. I in-part solved this problem by securing a loaner-laptop in the interim, however when I attempted to download the necessary software to continue my studies in the course I was restricted by a preexisting administrative password, which without knowledge of, rendered installing the necessary software (to complete the course) impossible.

Now out-of-town, I attempted to contact the previous owner for several days(to no avail) to try and solve the problem. So far I have not been successful. I may have alternatively sought to visit a library with the appropriate resources, however even if I had managed to do that, it would not have been feasible to continue the course in good-standing without impeding on my internship responsibilities. My internship schedule requires me to be at work from 9am-5pm every day, however like most workers in my field, I'm almost always in the office later than those times. In addition to that, I commute to work everyday (which takes a cumulative 2 hours, daily), and must dedicate at least 2 hours a day to study for external certification required in my industry (of which I intend to sit for exam in early July).

Overall, these hardware/software restrictions & my time restrictions make it very infeasible for me to complete this course. The situation with the former laptop-owner caused me to miss the submission of three course deliverables (together worth 10-11 of my final grade) and has made it very difficult to practically study for the final exam (which is on June 16 and worth 45 of my final grade) these past 9 days. Even if these hardware restrictions were not a factor, my career-decision forced me to find a new home (in a new town), relocate, and settle into work, all within a 48-hour timespan. It is for these reasons that I cannot complete this course, and request an appeal to drop CISC 101 after the academic deadline so as to not affect my cumulative academic standing.

I want to emphasize that this will not happen again in the future. My experience in this firm will allow me (so long as I don't receive an F-grade in CISC 101 or any other course this year) to seek out full-time work this during the traditional recruiting cycle for Summer 2017, instead of making a last-minute impromptu relocation in the middle of the academic-term. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, I do wish to further pursue studies through the school of computing. Although I am fully committed to finishing my degree in Applied Economics, my month of studies in CISC 101 has opened my eyes to the creative possibilities of programming; something that my primary field of study doesn't offer. I really enjoyed the course, and I know (given my performance on assignments) that I can do well in future CISC courses I choose to take, which I definitely intend to do.

Thank you for considering my request for appeal.

Reid Talarico