Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: My Appeal Letter
Hi, my name is Steffan Sritharan and my student number is 20042729, I am a distance studies student currently in my first year of the English BA program, a program that I am very grateful to have gotten into and look forward to graduating from as well.
My appeal is in regards to SOCY122 which is a full year course, I am looking to have the course dropped from my transcripts completely. As you can see that it is the only course that I was enrolled in for the winter semester and the reason was because I thought that I would be able to make a passing grade but my circumstances surrounding my mental health took its peak during the winter semester.
I have been diagnosed with depression during the mid break of the winter semester, it was something that I was dealing with throughout the entire year of 2017 and 2018. It began last year when I had to deal with a few personal downfalls. I avoided getting help, but thankfully a friend encouraged me early this winter semester to go see a doctor. I went to see my doctor, and she diagnosed me with depression. Shortly after, I was prescribed medication to take that would help me get better, but I had always felt negatively towards medication as I feel they do more harm then good in many cases. I went through with it though so that I could help get myself out of this funk, as expected the medication only brought me a mix of emotions, mainly bad more so then good. I was not functioning well at all, kept myself bed ridden a majority of the time because I had no will a to move or function on a normal basis.
I had told myself that I did not want to drop the last remaining course as I did not want to fall too far behind or have anything intervene with my academic progress, or student loans. Therefore, I made the decision to keep sociology on my course load and hoped that I would be able to push through and obtain a reasonable mark in the course. Unfortunately, nothing went as planned and my depression and anxiety increased severely, to the point of not being able to function at all. The day of the exam, I was in no way shape or form able to get myself out of bed, the medication had taken a toll on both my mind and body. This led me to missing the exam and I ended up with a failing grade in the sociology 122 course. This mark is will impact my overall GPA and transcript severely, it will be a very hard uphill battle to come out of this low GPA and as mentioned I am grateful to be in this program and want to graduate from this Queens program. That is why I ask that with this appeal, that you can understand my situation and know that for me it would be greatly appreciative if you were able to remove the Sociology course from my transcript. Regarding the situation, I will be attaching both a doctor note from my doctor stating that we have discussed my depression symptoms and she has diagnosed myself with depression between the winter semester months. I will also attach the first prescription of the medication in which I had taken during that time.

I also want to mention that I have now taken the right steps to help cope with my depression, as I have started trying solutions outside of medication to help deal with the pain, such as meditation, exercise, a healthy diet and a routine set by my family members to help me get myself out of this hole. I am on the road to recovery and will be using this summer to get myself back on track in my life and to get where I need to be. Which will allow me to be prepared and ready for the upcoming school year in September. Thank you for your time and I hope that you can understand my situation as it has been a hard past few months. I will do everything in my power to work hard, commit and make sure that I excel at school from here on, as I have fallen on hard times and now know what I need to do, to achieve my very best academically, as the only place for me to go is up from here on. My main goal is to earn my way to a better GPA and graduate from Queens with a BA in English, not only for myself but for my parents, that is my biggest goal to achieve as of now.