Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Stephenson,

Thank you for taking the time to read this appeal. My name is Kruthika Mahadevan and I am a 4th year Biology Major student at Queen¿¿s University. I am appealing to drop PATH 310 (Winter, 2019), and BIOL 206 (Winter, 2019). I am appealing these two courses on the basis of an illness I have been recently experiencing this semester and a bit of last semester. I am writing to appeal these two courses this semester, because I believe that this situation was beyond my control and contributed to my grades, had circumstances with regards to my health been much better I would have been able to do much better in these two courses.

I had a very difficult time this past Winter 2019 semester, especially with these two courses due to my illness. I have been recently suffering from ovarian cyst ruptures this semester, which has been causing severe pain in my abdomen and lower abdominal area, along with nausea and migraines. This has really been effecting my studies as even though the pain only lasts for a day or two, the migraines have go on for 2-3 days before and after, and nausea 1-2 days before. I had a rupture during the fall semester as well when I visited KGH, but it had become more consistent and really painful this semester. My first rupture this semester occurred on March 2nd , when I attended KGH and ended up having to stay the night followed by two more this semester, the last one during my PATH 310 finals (April 22nd) when I was taken to KGH with a proctor. It has been really difficult to keep up with all my courses this semester with this problem, but it has especially taken a toll on these two courses since for PATH 310 it occurred during a major evaluation unexpectedly and throughout the semester, and for BIOL 206 there were consistent labs every week which were really effected since a lot of times my migraines or nausea had prevented me from doing well on them or attending them, I also had a major migraine during my finals for BIOL 206 which I told Dr.Friesen about, and she encouraged me to appeal the course. I realize that the drop date was around week 8, but since this was an ongoing problem during that time, I never had the chance to drop these two courses to ease my workload then. I understand I should have appealed to drop the courses earlier when I realized it was starting to become really hard to handle due to my illness , but because of the unpredictability of ovarian cyst ruptures I didn¿¿t expect this to so frequent of a problem this semester, and thought I would be able to handle the situation until I got home for the summer, but I was wrong, making it really hard to focus on my studies.

Now that I¿¿m back home, I got KGH to send all my official medical reports to my family physician in Toronto, who will be monitoring my health. In order to resolve this, he has now run ultra sounds and tests to check whether this is polycystic ovarian syndrome due to the consistency of the ruptures, and will be giving me medications after results are in, in order to prevent such ruptures from happening in the future and effecting my studies in future semesters. I have also had phone appointments with an academic advisor, and I plan on taking these two courses again in the upcoming year. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my appeal, in the future I will ensure to keep drop deadlines in mind and will make sure this never happens again.

Thank you

Sincerely,
Kruthika Mahadevan