Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to read my appeal. My name is Jazmin Eadie and I am a first-year concurrent education student. I have been battling various mental illnesses since I was in middle school. Unfortunately, since I have come to university they have progressed to extreme levels. I am not the type of individual to sit around and wait for one to come and save me so I have taken action to fight the thoughts that are constantly in my head.

Throughout high school, I went to a psychologist and am starting to see a new psychologist at Queens. I have seen a psychiatrist here and he helped me in understanding my illness, the severity of it and the root causes of it. I go to a doctor ones every two weeks (sometimes every week) in order to discuss my feelings and the medication that I am currently on. Since coming to university I have decided to put my mental health first and realized that it was time to get on medication. I am almost at the maximum dosage of my medication and I am waiting for it to kick in. I can not observe a difference in my mental state as my mood changes from one minute to the next. Some moments I am crying, the next I am laughing and then I am in a rage of anger. I scare myself and I am just trying to manage with this monster that I live with every day. I am trying to get better and next semester I will be participating in a group program with my psychiatrist and learning about how to manage my emotions. I am volunteering and tutoring a child in order to feel happy once a week and that helps me continue to want to stay around in order to be a teacher in the future.

I am struggling to be motivated as I have a hard time doing anything at this time in my mental state. I have no motivation to get up and make food or read a textbook. I didn't realize how intense my course load was until recently as the semester is starting to come to a close and I just don't have the motivation to keep going. I have talked to an arts and science academic advisor and she has advised me to drop health studies in order to get through the semester with my other courses. I have decreased my course load already by dropping sociology and now I have four courses left. I have religion, prof, psychology and health studies remaining. I want to drop the course called the social determinants of health because there are too many assignments to still do and I do not have the ability to do them at this point in time. I wish I did and was able to keep going but I really don¿¿t have the energy. I am in a constant state of fog and regardless of how I eat or how much I sleep I am still exhausted. I am trying to get better and I am doing what I can in order to do so. I would drop all of my courses and go to a place like CamH in order to get the help that I need but I am here and I am paying for this by myself so I will do what I can in order to finish this year and get the help that I need.

At the moment I score a high mark on the anxiety test and am not able to participate in the government¿¿s program to help individuals who are dealing with depression and anxiety. With that being said I am doing everything that I can in order to decrease my stress and anxiety and one of the biggest sources of my anxiety is my course load. This is the reason why I am writing to you and am trying to appeal this course. For me, psychology, prof and religion are manageable at the moment. In prof, I have to write a reflection on teaching every week and it is very simple (it is done for the semester now and there is no more work to do since we just have a group project that I have finished). In psychology, I have one exam this semester and then in religion, I only have one more test this semester. This quantity of work is a huge stressor for me but it is manageable given the time that I have my health issues. However, my health class is not manageable for me right now since I have to watch at least fifteen hours of documentaries, read an abundance of articles, write two papers and an exam. I do not have the ability at this time to do any of that since I can barely function without wanting to cry or sleep since that is my happy place. My ability to memorize things has decreased significantly since starting the medication as I am unable to concentrate and get things to stick in my head. In order to memorize five concepts, it takes at least two hours. This means that having exams coming up and papers to write is a horrible combination for me since they both take a large quantity of my time to accomplish.

I want to do the best that I can in the courses that I am taking but currently, this load of courses is not manageable for me and I want to get better now in contrast to having my mental health deteriorate more in the upper years of university.

Thank you for your time if there is anything further that I can inform you of then please email me at 17jse@queensu.ca or you can call me at (647)746-3403

P.S. I apologize for sending this in late as I had an appointment to get the letter from my doctor weeks ago but I ended up being in the hospital for my mental state. I have now been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and schizo tendencies. I wanted to get this letter in much earlier and Spring can state that as I have been communicating with her about this appeal. I also now have a psychotherapist who I see every week.

Thank you so much
-Jazmin Eadie