Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Appeal Regulation 20 b) Requirement to withdraw 1 year

Hello my name is William Berry and I am writing you to appeal the decision to apply a 1 year requirement to withdraw on my account. This requirement for withdraw for the academic year starting September 2017 to April 2018 was implemented to my poor academic results as my transcripts indicate. My intent for this appeal is to allow myself to register for Fall and Winter courses for this upcoming Academic year. The reason for this poor academic record over the last two years was due to other external factors in my life that greatly altered and negatively impacted my mental health and therefore my capacity to function in an academic setting. I have just in the last 4 months been diagnosed by my general practitioner Dr. Phillip Choptiany with Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety disorder and Major depressive disorder. This has been brought on in his and mine opinion by the recent diagnosis in the last 2 years of my father with Early-onset Alzheimer's disease. This diagnosis has been a great burden placed upon my family and I will admit I haven't taken it well. I bottled up my emotions and didn't talk about it with anyone and it greatly effected my work at school. The onset of anxiety symptom's came to a head last year with myself ending up in KGH on January 16th as I had a severe panic attack which resulted in hyperventilation and a near blackout. Prior to this I was finding myself having trouble breathing in class which also caused me great discomfort which led to me skipping classes and of course a further decline in academic performance. In the aftermath of this I went home and had a battery of tests done with my doctor and it was concluded after many tests that I had some form of anxiety but the extent of it wasn't fully understood. This was partly due to my unwillingness to myself to talk about the depression I was experiencing. In the aftermath of this I returned to queens and continued to do poorly with my condition not fully undiagnosed. Looking back now I think I wasn't ready to admit to myself what I was feeling and experiencing. The effect of my depression on myself was many fold. It made me lethargic, prone to sleeping in, sad and finally it greatly impaired my ability to focus and learn. It was not uncommon for me to spend hours at the library reading the same pages over and over without getting any information out of it. This turned out to be extremely distressing and only fueled my self doubt and unwillingness to go to class, take tests and somedays even leave my room. I am submitting this appeal knowingly late and am asking for an exception because I have taken this past summer to reflect and get treatment for my conditions. It was my opinion that I should not be premature with my appeal before I was certain I was ready to give school another go. As for my therapy more specifically I have spent the last summer months both in counselling and have now been on a brand of anti-depressants (Trintellix) as well. I wanted to be sure my treatment had put me in a place where I felt ready to return to school and this is the reason I am appealing so late. I fully intend to stay on my antidepressant medication and am planning on going back regularly to Toronto to continue my counselling as needed. I ask you finally to please give me the chance to get my academics back on track this year as I say with certainty I am in a much better place mentally to succeed this upcoming year. Although I am accepting of that fact I should be realistic in expecting their will be ongoing challenges, I am eager to get back to normal and work towards the goal of achieving my Economics degree with all my effort.

As for specifics of my academic plan. My goal is to return to Queens and complete my 200 level courses this year. My first order of business is square away my co-compulsory 100 level calculus course and at the same time complete the supplementary 200 level economics courses. I am already up at school and have been sitting in on the classes I intend to take. Those being Math 126, Econ 212, Econ 222, Stat 263 HIST 216.

As for the documentation of my before mentioned psychological ailments I do not have them written out as of now but I can certainly ask if I can get them in writing from my doctor as I wasn¿¿t given any documentation other than his verbal diagnosis. If it at all factors factors into your judgment on this matter I will follow up and see if a written diagnosis is at all possible.

-Regards

William Berry