Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dean of studies:
I am appealing the Faculty¿¿s request that I must withdraw from Queen¿¿s University for a minimum of one year. The decision was made based on my low GPA and a complete lack of attempt to school work, this was due to my unpreparedness to a new environment but mainly due to the ignoring of my own mental state.

The origin of this started back in high school, I did IB program at my high school in Canada, looking back from now it was a bad decision because by the time I applied my family and I thought it would help with my application to Canadian universities. From what I know it didn¿¿t help much but it certainly gave me some significant drawbacks. The three HLs I took was History, English (Mandatory in Canada) and Chemistry. None of them helps with my pursuit of I.T. career. Everyone around me was smart and hardworking, which drove me forward but at the same time gave me a lot of peer pressure. Constant Inferiority made me depressed, and I started to ignore things I don't want to see in my life and just let them happen. This obviously was not good for me as I even perfunctorily did my university applications. Queen¿¿s accepted me however this issue was never confronted by myself. By the new year at university whenever I encounter hardship, whether academically or mentally, I chose to ignore it and just let them happen, this was a grave mistake as I soon realize but as more and more school work starts to pile up, instead of confronting myself and actually be better, I allowed myself to sit in the self-loathing mentality and waste away my time. By the second half of the semester, I have gotten better, made friends and forced myself into a healthier schedule, however, the school work of MATH 121 and MATH 111 that was left behind was too much and I thought I can just take it next year without realizing that too low of a GPA can result in a request of withdrawal from school. After receiving the notification, as I was overwhelmed with panic, I realized that sitting around complaining will not help me at all, I realized that if I want to seek help, I need to do it right away. I called my parents full of regret but to my surprise, they are rather calm and said to me: ¿¿Just keep working and be better, don¿¿t be sorry and be better.¿ I feel awoken by their words as the tear running down my face, I was frightened for what they would say to me and what would happen if I wait another year and waste my time. As they showed their full support to me, I told myself that this is when this self-hating cycle ends.

In my future studies, I will seek help whenever I need, whether academically or mentally, I will not shy away from obstacles and I will confront them. More specifically though would be that I will not skip any lectures and I will do all of my homework and assignments. I still want to pursue my dream of working in IT industry and I want to have a major in computing and a minor in Mathematics. In this summer I am taking MATH 121, CISC 102 and Spanish, please give me another chance to stdudy here at Queen¿¿s next year as I will prove my improvement in this summer.

Luotai Yi
20070462