Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I am appealing to drop CISC 203 (Fall, 2018) and CISC 204 (Fall, 2018). This past semester did not go the way I intended it to, and I ended up failing two courses and having to retake another one this coming fall semester. Before the semester started, I was excited about my courses and thought I was well prepared, considering that I had had a successful and motivating first year. However, by week 3 I started feeling and going through things I had never experienced before. Although I had made a few friends in my first year and was living with one of them this past semester, I never felt as though I was close to any of them. The same was true this past semester: I started seeing myself as an outlier, someone who could not fit in, and my social anxiety got much worse throughout the semester. I was missing my family and friends in Vancouver greatly. I lost even more confidence in myself and became more self conscious when interacting with people I did not know. I had been able to cope with these feelings last school year as my brother was in fourth year and I could see him whenever I was feeling lonely. With him gone, I ended up rarely seeing and talking to friends outside of lectures, and I started feeling isolated. Although I had never had depression before, I felt as though it was slowly creeping into my life as the semester progressed. I spent most of my weekends alone, paralyzed by my anxiety and growing depression, scared to join any clubs in fear of having to meet and talk to new people. I facetimed my parents and high school friends almost every day, but could not see them in person as they lived in Vancouver. A lot of days, I would wake up and not have any desire to do anything. During most of these days, I would not be able to focus on schoolwork and it would put me more and more behind. As the semester dragged on, things got progressively worse. CISC 203 and 204 were only graded based on tests and had no final or midterm. These tests were each spaced within 2 weeks of each other and so, keeping up with these two courses was much harder than with the rest. I did not drop them by the week 8 deadline because I thought I would still manage to pull through, and because my parents encouraged me to stay in them since the grade I needed in both was still attainable. I mostly relied on talking to my parents and brother to deal with these problems and thought I would get through these times and be able to focus again. However, I felt lost and unable to deal with this as I had never experienced something similar before, and so, I was scared to reach out to a counsellor. When I finally got the courage to to talk to a counsellor, it was December, and I was already in too much of a hole to turn it around. I still plan to finish computer science, but I am taking this winter semester off and staying home, where I just got a job in retail, which is enabling me to interact with others more so I can overcome anxiety. I'm also talking to a counsellor here, reading intensively self-help, motivational, and various other books, and generally taking the time to reorganize my life and thoughts, set my priorities, and develop confidence in my abilities to succeed when I return to Queen's in September. Depending on how I feel, I might take a course online during the summer semester. However, in December I plan to retake CISC 203, 204 and CISC 220 (the other class I got a D in) and stay an extra year at Queen's to finish my computer science degree.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for your understanding,

Filip Sokic