Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Jill Atkinson,
I, Ryan Angelo Pangborn, am writing this appeal to request both a late drop from MATH110 and a Aegrotat Standing from MATH120. Both of the classes were from my first year at Queen's when in the third week I fell into a depression. This depression was coupled with a sickness and trouble with medication. Both the sickness and medication played into each other making the situation even worse. The sickness had me fatigued where the best thing I could do was rest and try to relax. An example of how bad it had been was when I forced myself to go to MATH120 but when I got into the lecture hall I was feeling unbalanced and my head was pounding and my vision was getting blurry. While this might have just been a thing to pass over my medication complicated the situation. I was previously on a med that had a side effect of being a very powerful sedative which I had been on since I was in Grade 6. This medication made sleep consistently throughout my time on it to sleep on average for 12 hours. This is not healthy in any regards as I would be needing a better sleep cycle to function properly and successful at Queen's. However I was reliant on the medication to fall asleep and during my time looking for a psychiatrist to help me deal with this problem the situation was escalating beyond what I have ever had to deal with before. Due to me needing rest for my sickness I started a habit of sleeping for around 15 hours a day and it was taking a toll on me mentally and emotional. I had trouble working up the energy to continue trying to force myself through the courses after having missed so much material and dealing with those thoughts while still not being able to get satisfying treatment for my ever growing mental situation all ended up with me trapped in my own head, in my own bed and into a depression. This all piled up with the lack of support, the inability to get out of bed due to my medication and the depression which was violently bubbling up and reaching its boiling point where I was so desperate for something to save me, I attempted suicide. This resulted in me being brought into the General where I was for 10 hours and having had the effect of losing my ability to speak for that same amount of time. Because of the severity of the situation my family got involved having been unaware of the problems I have been facing. After this I was taking time to recover while finally getting to see a psychiatrist after the fact and getting some help from Student Service dropping a majority of my classes because of how I couldn't handle staying in them without the workload continuing to get worse. However the damage was already done and I was not doing as well as I could have done if I did not sink into my depression. However my medication has been adjusted with me no long on the medication that put me to sleep having had it weeded out of my system by slowly lowering my dosage under the supervision of my home psychiatrist. Now I have returned to Queen's to complete a successful year where I am planning to declare my major as Physics and Math. Not only is this a goal but also to do well enough in this to prepare myself for the years ahead. I am doing so by working up the amount of classes I can handle. This year I have 3 classes per semester and depending on how this year goes and the input that I get from parents, I will add some more classes until I am able to competently handle the course load. I also have both a psychiatrist and psychologist to watch over my time at Queens and provide support that I did not have at the start of last year. I plan on redoing MATH110 and retaking PHSY106 this year with all of this to help succeed in them.