Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Thank you for taking the time to read this. My name is Adam Hassan and I am kindly requesting that my courses from first semester be removed from my GPA due to extenuating circumstances outlined in this appeal. I believe that I could have done more to help my situation, but admit I fell into a deep spiral of depression, starting with the first month of class, leading to a lack of energy, motivation and happiness. I would like to begin with an overview of my family and the issues I have been dealing with for the past few years. My mother divorced my father in Grade 12, resulting in many issues, yet was luckily still able to get accepted into Queen's university for Life Science. My father has a history of anger and recklessness and decided that he would not pay any support, neither spousal nor child. My mom is jobless due to being married off to my father at 19. Now, I am the oldest of four siblings, two of which are younger than 9 years of age, and I had to leave for first year knowing that my family was going be struggling with this while I would not be with them. Forwarding time to the start of this year, and I am luckily still here, and so is my family. I have been struggling financially since 1st year, paying for textbooks, food, rent, student fees and other cost of living finances. This year was definitely the worst of the three. I was already high in student loans, credit card debt, and could barely afford to pay for my room. When I mean barely, I literally mean each month would be a scramble of me trying to find money to pay, usually resulting in me paying later than the expected time. It reached a point where the beginning of each month unloaded a huge amount of stress on me to the point that I hated time moving forward altogether as I would get closer to that rent payment. Every time I somehow made the payment, I knew that in just 30 days I would have to find someone to help me. Now, the way I was able to pay for rent for the first month was the remainder of the money I had accumulated from my summer job. However, the second month involved me having to call my uncle and ask him for money, as he was the only person in the world who has been helping us since the divorce. I felt more and more ashamed as time passed, having to constantly ask my uncle to pay for me throughout the coming months, even though he himself was in debt. The third month I called my father and let him know the situation, he laughed at told me that my mother should pay for it as she is the one the asked for the divorce. He then revealed to me that he was planning to escape court ruling by running away to his siblings in Iraq, and that he would be leaving before my birthday (November 10th). Now, my whole world literally fell apart. One of the few things that gave me hope these past few years was that my father would eventually be forced by the slow court to pay us everything he owed, however that would no longer be a possibility, and now I knew my family and I were destined to keep falling until we reached welfare. I broke down, told my mother, and told her I would try to convince him to stay. First semester, and even this semester had consisted of me constantly visiting home and pretending to be happy in order to lift their energy, while my two younger two siblings have already begun to show symptoms of depression. My mother has been really depressed as well, constantly telling me I need to get a career as soon as possible in order to help her, constantly argues with me and complains about my brother, is almost always in a bad or crying mood, constantly tells me of her own problems, such as her abusive boyfriend, how ashamed she is asking my uncle for money, how she is unable to put the kids in any programs, and complains about my father and how I should do something to change his mind. I tried to see if an agreement could be reached, to which my father said that my mother would have to stop coming after him in court, and only then would he begin payment. It was then that I realized that he was lying, and my mother agreed. So he left, and everything has gotten so much worse since.

Now, I think it is time to talk about my 18 year old brother, Fahad. My brother and I were not always close, and only in the past two years have we become best friends. Now, my brother has been taking the entire divorce situation even worse than I have, using drugs and being reckless, not caring about anything he does, believing that nothing matters. He fell into a very bad state of depression last year, saying that he no longer believes in God, as God would not allow this to happen, and progressively has gotten worse since. This year was his first at McMaster University, and he was not adapting well. My mother called me numerous times complaining about how he stays at home all day not eating and just smoking marijuana, missing many classes. I knew I had to get through to him, and phone calls were not going to cut it. My mother already has four children to take care of, now it was my turn to help out. I left Queens many, many times first semester, in order to spend the weekend with my brother, involving things like taking him to the grocery store and buying food, cleaning his apartment, and a lot of arguing. He was telling me how he had given up, and how he too was struggling to pay his rent. He had a job last year and was able to save up more than me, paying for the first two months by himself. However, he was talking to me about how he does not think he should pay for rent as he is not even doing well in school. He suggested he drop out, make more money and return next year. He had no faith in himself, and I knew it was my job to help him. Each weekend I was there, I felt I had made progress and helped him, even if only slightly. However, it seemed that each time I left, that period of time where I was not with him lead to a reverse of progress, and I would have to come back and see how far back he has fallen. I was very unhappy first semester, I wanted to give up on myself and considered if I should drop out of my courses and help him with his. I felt useless, and I honestly still do now, my mother and siblings have been suffering for so long and I feel ashamed that I cannot do more and am so far away from them. I feel like I made the wrong decision coming to Queens and admit I feel like crying as I write this. This year was meant to be the year I came out of my depression and accomplished many things that would in turn make me happy, yet nothing like that occurred. Instead, I had to deal with so many stressful things and events that would never end to the point where I did not even know if I would make it to second semester. I literally have never felt more alone and isolated in my life, even the few friends I have here have no idea what I am going through. I often contemplating dying, although I have not reached the suicidal stage. To put it more clearly, I constantly wish I can just die so I do not have to deal with anything any longer. Some days I do not agree with this, some days I do. I just want time to stop, it is moving too fast and I cannot handle it at all. I am so drained, upset and powerless, I have no money to help my family, I cannot even help my brother, and am not only useless but a mess. I have to repeat courses and spend more time before I complete my degree, meaning that it will be a long time before I can support my family and have some worth to them. I honestly feel like a disgrace and an imbecile, my only job was to do well in university or at least pass and I could not even do that. During the second half of first semester, my mother brought it to my attention that she was having many problems and arguments with my brother and that she could not handle it. I assured her that I would deal with it and went back again for the weekend. I visited my brother in his apartment, which was once again disgustingly dirty, dark and without food. He told me that he was planning to drop out as he was failing all of his courses. This killed a part of me, as I believe that had I been more close and helpful with him earlier, it would not have led to this. Feeling helpless and useless once again, I told him that if he was going to fail all his classes, he might as well drop out in order to save his transcript. He agreed and told me he was going to find a way to cancel his lease. Now, let's forward to the week before exams, when life literally became hell. I received a call from my brother's friend at 12am one night telling me that my brother had found his roommate dead on the floor of their apartment due to alcohol poisoning and was currently in the hospital. I was so shocked, this was what I would call the nail in the coffin. I returned home the following day, trying to support my brother with my family, but he was really bad. He says his roommate was his best friend, and I could only imagine what he went through coming home to find him dead on the floor. I lost all focus on school and stayed with my brother for a couple days, before deciding it was time to go back to Kingston or I would definitely fail my exams. I received many calls from my brother when I was back, and they were not good. I told my brother when I left that I would be calling him every day, and that he should call me whenever he needed to. Thankfully, he did call me many times, but none of the conversations were good. He fell into the same level of depression as me if not worse, saying that it was his fault and that if he was there none of this would have happened. He was telling me how he does not want to live any longer, how he is feeling suicidal, and how he keeps reliving memories of when he was happier. I wanted to go back as now he needed me the most, yet I knew I would fail my exams if I did. I called my mother as it was the only thing I could do, and she was able to help him a bit more, yet only slightly as they were still having constant arguments. Now, this point of the semester I was at my worst, much worse than I even am currently. I felt like I was losing my mind, like life could not get any worse, wondering how I fell this far. The words helpless and useless keep circulating my mind, as they both define my impact during that semester. I could only watch as my mother and brother died inside more and more. I remember this one regret of mine, where I asked my mother to stop telling me her problems as I could not deal with hearing them all. I am glad to say I have changed that this semester, but last semester I reached a point where I was very sensitive to every problem and developed a habit of crying which began when my dad left and got much worse when my brother's friend passed. I cried many times during exam season and had no hope in doing well. I could only hope that I would pass, and even that was not given to me.
I feel like everything is on me, issues with my education, my younger siblings, my brother, mother, father, surviving, needing to find a job, needing to sublet my house, might even get kicked out and become a failure to my family and many others. I just want to be happy and just hope you can give me a chance to prove myself. I am not trying to use these past events as a way to excuse my academic failure, but rather just to lay out the environment I was in during the school year. I promise you that I am determined, determined to finish my degree and help my family, and I just want to be the person I want to be. I know that I could have indeed worked harder despite the circumstances and apologize for that. I let my depression get to me and affect my studies, and I know everyone suffers from some form of depression and can still handle their studies, and I do regret being unable to handle anything and feeling helpless. I think it originated from the feeling of isolation and being unable to do anything or help anyone. Although this semester also contained its own amount of issues and setbacks, I am doing better than I was last semester. My brother has gotten better, although still struggles daily, yet is getting help as we were able to get him access to a psychiatrist. I am ashamed to say I still have not gotten over the crying habit, as tears were literally going down my eyes as I was writing this appeal. I feel like I cannot even stop them now, they just come when I am feeling emotional and I cannot do anything to stop it. It is also due to exam season that I am feeling this way, as many other students definitely feel this way during this time, I know I am not special. I am just trying to fix my wrongs and do anything I can to improve the future, and I just cannot see a future if I am no longer here. I am normally a hard worker who is ambitious and goes to all my classes, determined to do the best I can, please don't let the first semester represent the type of person I am. Thank you very much for taking the time to read about my life, this has all come straight from my heart and I hope it is reason enough to remove first semesters marks, but I am not sure. I would also like to mention if it possible to keep Math 121 from first semester, as this is the third time I am doing the course and although I received a 40 on the first exam, I am still planning to pass the course. Thank you once again.