Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean,

I am a mathematics student currently in my third year at Queen¿¿s. I am writing this letter in reference to the appeal I made in March 2016 to drop MATH 110 past the deadline. I would like to amend this appeal to include CHIN 100 and MATH 120 taken during the 2015/2016 academic year, CISC 101 taken during the spring of 2016, and MATH 110 taken during the 2016/2017 academic year. While I understand that there is a one-term deadline to make such amendments, I was unaware that these amendments were a possibility until just recently. Although I was enrolled in CHIN 100 and MATH 120 at the time of writing my 2016 appeal letter, I did not include them in the appeal due to the fact that there was still a chance, albeit very slim, that I could pass those two courses, and I was unrealistically hopeful that I would manage to do so. However, due to the circumstances detailed in my 2016 appeal letter, I was incredibly far behind in my coursework at that point and was unable to catch up in time for my final exams, leading to my failures in both courses. I would like to request that the one-term deadline be waived due to these particular circumstances, as well as the circumstances detailed below.

Reiterating what was explained in my 2016 letter, I have suffered from anxiety since I was a young child and I have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Since then, I was additionally diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in February 2017, and I have attached documentation of the diagnosis to this appeal. As a result of the late diagnosis, I was not receiving treatment for ADHD throughout the entirety of first year and a majority of second year, and during this time I was unaware of the cause behind many of my difficulties in school, such as my lack of ability to concentrate and difficulties with time management. During the summer semester of 2016, I made an effort to learn how to better manage my anxiety, but I still had difficulty completing the weekly CISC 101 assignments that made up a significant portion of the final course grade, and due to missed and incomplete assignments, I failed the course. In second year, while I continued to work on managing my anxiety, the fact that I was unaware of my ADHD prevented me from making the progress I had hoped for. At the time, I could only manage to succeed in a course at the expense of my other courses, which lead to my second failure in MATH 110 in April 2017.

Over the past year, I have made changes to further my academic progress. I began seeing a therapist in October 2017 in order to tackle emotional difficulties and further manage my anxiety. Additionally, since being diagnosed with ADHD, I have been able to better understand the underlying causes of my academic difficulties and take the proper courses of action, and I have been using a combination of behavioural modifications and medication to manage my symptoms in ways I had not been able to prior to being diagnosed. I have also lightened my course load, making schoolwork more manageable. These changes have lead to ongoing progress and will help me to continue improving academically. However, due to the ongoing nature of GAD and ASD, as well as the fact that I did not receive an ADHD diagnosis until the end of second year, my academic performance in first year and second year was poor, and this poor performance was particularly evident with CHIN 100, MATH 120, CISC 101, and MATH 110.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope it helps in the appeal process.

Sincerely,

Kristen Caldwell