Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean Jenn Stephenson,

My name is Adam Hassan and I am requesting that my request to withdraw for three years is waived. I believe that I went through many overwhelming circumstances during my third year and kindly ask that you hear my story. I would like to provide a little backstory in order to give a better idea of the environment I was in. My mother legally divorced my father towards the end of Grade 12, and thankfully I had still gotten into all the universities I applied to, having a strong Grade 12 average of 92. I accepted my offer for Life Sci from Queen's University. I did not handle the divorce well, and many times I was given an ultimatum to choose between parents. I made the decision to choose my mother as my father was refusing to pay any form of support. My mother was a stay at home mom and my father's decision to oppose court and not support us resulted in years of issues, causing pain and unhappiness to my mother, my three younger siblings and I. Being the oldest I feel as though my younger siblings are my responsibility, and it really broke me that I had to leave them in order to go to a university three hours away from my home. I struggled a lot first year, not having any friends, struggling in school and feeling more alone than I have ever felt.
In second year, I began to make friends with the people I shared a house with, yet the situation escalated resulting in one housemate threatening to kill the rest of us in our sleep. That housemate caused a lot of pain and unhappiness during second year and was one of the major reasons why I let myself fall into depression. During that year, he did many worrying things, such as shaving his head, eating glass and of course the death threats. He later was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and seemed to hate everyone, including his parents. Arguing with him every day about morality and his dilemmas took a lot of energy out of me, especially since the rest of my housemates decided not to help him anymore and left it on me. There were many other issues that occurred in second year as well, like my anorexic brother falling into a deeper hole of depression than I did. I also struggled with the landlord many times due to her attempts to scam us out of money. After the events of second year I had thankfully gotten my appeal granted and was able to resume studies for my third year.
The beginning of third year started off well, as I was a Gael for the first time in my life and enjoyed it very, very much. I noticed a surge in energy and happiness, and it was the highlight of the year, an experience that made me actually feel at home. After frosh week ended, I began to focus on my studies. This was my first time doing chemistry as I was enrolled in biology classes during my second year, in the hope that I would be able to switch into the biology program- yet my second year GPA was too low. Now, second year chemistry was quite difficult for me, as it was my first time ever doing it. I did begin to like chemistry with time yet felt as though everyone in the class had more experience, having taken the useful 100-level chemistry classes then the 200-level chemistry classes the year after. During the second semester I began to actually enjoy chemistry very much but it was after I had already had a bad first semester. Many issues occurred in first semester which caused me an overwhelming amount of stress. Now 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 as I was already high in student loans, credit card debt, and could barely afford to pay for my room. It reached a point where the beginning of each month caused a huge amount of stress to the point that time moving forward worried me altogether as I would get closer to that rent payment. I was somehow able to pay off the first semester using summer work money as well as help from my uncle, yet was left unable to pay for other costs of living as my money was all used on rent. I felt very ashamed, 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 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). 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 system 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. This did not work unfortunately.
This year consisted of me constantly visiting home and pretending to be happy in order to lift the energy of my family, as my two younger two siblings had already begun to show symptoms of depression. My mother had been really depressed as well and has a history of venting to me when she is upset, which I allow as she has no one else to talk to. She constantly kept telling me that I needed to get a career as soon as possible in order to help her, constantly argues with me and complains about my brother, is often in a bad or crying mood, constantly tells me of her 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. She has thankfully fixed many issues with her boyfriend through marriage counselling and their relationship is doing much better, as he is becoming more supportive. The next person I would like to talk about is my brother, who had a large (if not the largest) impact on my mental health for third year. My brother and I were not always close, and only in the past two years have we become closer. My brother had been taking the entire divorce situation even worse than I have, using drugs and being reckless, not caring about his actions, believing that nothing matters. He fell into a very bad state of depression, 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, 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 regarding his life decisions. He had given up on life and had suggested that he drop out. He had no faith in himself and I knew it was my job to help him. Each weekend I was there, I felt as though 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, as 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. In the moment I felt like I made the wrong decision coming to Queens and this year was meant to be the year I came out of my depression, creating accomplishments such as excelling in classes and setting the foundation for greater work experience, yet nothing like that occurred. Instead, I had to deal with so many stressful things and events that led me to feeling more alone and isolated than I have ever felt in my life, even the few friends I had here had no idea what I was going through. I just wanted time to stop as it was moving too fast and I could not handle it. I was very drained, upset and powerless, having no idea on how to help my family and being unable to help my brother. I have to now 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 be of any real support to them. I honestly felt like a disgrace as my only job was to do well in university or at least pass and I could not even do that.
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 extremely upset; his roommate was a very kind human being and it was a huge tragedy. 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. 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 everything in my life and stayed with my brother for a few 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 pleasant. He was telling me how he doesn't want to live any longer, how he is feeling suicidal, and how he keeps reliving memories of when he was happier. Now, this point of the semester I was at my worst. 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 defined my impact during that year. I could only watch as my mother and brother died inside more and more. I remember this one regret of mine, where I once asked my mother to stop telling me her problems as I couldn't deal with hearing them. I cried many times and felt like everything was on me, issues with my education, my younger siblings, my brother, mother, father, surviving, needing to find a job, needing to sublet my house, and the thought that I might even get kicked out and become a failure to my family at a time where they are relying on me to succeed. Second semester was very similar to first semester, I would call it the result of what occurred in first semester. It consisted of constantly visiting my family, not having my head in the game, slowly losing my sanity, and constantly feeling isolated and unable to do anything or help anyone. I considered dropping two classes before the week 8 deadline yet was very worried that I would not get out of academic probation if I did, thanks to the horrible first semester. I was also worrying about the costs of the courses as money was very valuable at that point and how I'd disappoint my family and attempted to prove to myself that regardless of my current grade in the courses, I would turn everything around and do well on the exams so that I could continue with my degree. This was unfortunately false hope that I had given myself and I see that now. Being unrealistic with my goals led to my downfall as it expected me to have high academic standards while dealing with all of these emotional problems. I should have definitely dropped the courses as it was unrealistic that I would do well on the exams and raise my marks with what I was dealing with emotionally. My second semester did prove to be better than my first semester as I was truly trying to improve now, but only marginally was I able to create that change.
I honestly 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¿¿ve always desired to be. I currently have a summer job as a collections agent which I enjoy very much and have calculated it to provide me with enough income for the coming year along with the OSAP I should expect to receive. I also will be more conservative with my finances now and look to live in an apartment where all utilities are included as it took a large portion of my income this year. My brother is doing much better, he currently has a summer job, has reconnected with high school friends and is seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. Seeing him spend time with his friends from work and high school has increased his happiness overall and I am very grateful. Everything else has turned out fine thankfully and the only thing left now is to dedicate myself fully to my academics as it is my only concern now and my greatest. Looking back at it now, I know that I could have handled the workload, I just let my emotions control me. I understand what caused me to fall apart and will never let that happen again. I lost sight of the goal and let myself get worse and worse. I will carefully evaluate my progress in a course by week 7 of the term and if I find that I have not kept up with the course work, I will drop the course by the week 8 deadline. I also plan to take a 4-course load rather than the 5 as I clearly overloaded myself and it would give me more time to do well in each course and make sure all of my marks are in order; and strategies implemented are effective. My current plan is a proactive plan which I regrettably have never imposed until now, which includes attending EVERY class, taking notes before AND after the class, taking the time to ask the professor or TA questions after class if anything is unclear (or office hours) and revising the notes after each class. I have developed a few rules which I will religiously follow as they will prevent any past mistakes from occurring. The first rule is to stay organized, while the second is to always have a plan in order to manage time efficiently. This will keep me ahead of the game and give me time to ensure everything is going as expected. The third rule is to maintain my health, through positive reinforcement after completing work as well as maintaining a gym schedule which will boost my confidence, happiness, and productivity. The fourth rule is do not procrastinate; review ahead of time in order to cement ideas into the brain well before the deadline. Rule number 5 is to spend 4-7 hours in the library daily. I noticed that I have never spent as much time as I liked in the library and that definitely had an impact on my grades. This may seem like a big leap, but I am willing to incrementally work my way up to spending more time in the library as the semester picks up relative to the coursework. I have also realized that being in a house with other students has not benefitted me as it was much more difficult to study at home. When I would need to sleep for early classes, they would play music late into the night or have their friends over and I constantly found myself feeling distracted whenever I was home. I have since decided I will be living alone for the upcoming year and did not re-sign my lease, giving precious time to myself in order to use for school. Whenever I am stressed, I will calm myself down by reminding myself that there is always a solution as long as I put work in. In regards to visiting siblings and family, I have decided that the most logical course of action is to only visit family when I have completed all course work for the days I shall be away. If I notice that my grades are not as high as expected, or that my mental health is worsening, I shall immediately plan to see a representative at the Student Academic Success Services and the Student Wellness Services. I shall be using this letter as well as my academic plan as an aid in achieving my goals and have objective targets to meet each day to keep me focused and on-track. I have provided a much more detailed course of action for my academics which I laid out in my academic plan; and have expressed my interest to meet with an academic advisor every 4 weeks in order to re-evaluate where I stand and read over my academic plan. I understand that things may come up even though I am very determined to dedicate 100 of my energy. I want to confirm that I really am at my 100, and will ensure this through an academic advisor.
Doing every second-year chemistry course has shown me the work involved to do well, and I fully believe I have what it takes to do well using the strategies included in the academic plan. And I don't mean just pass, I honestly feel as though I can finally be the A student I want to be by embedding the qualities an A student holds himself by. I know what it takes and I just want a chance to prove myself to my family and to myself. I have just watched my life slowly fall apart and I am tired of just watching it happen. I am angry and just want to improve myself and excel in my academic inclinations. Being away from university would not help me as it would take me away from the work environment where I am trying to excel in. I truly believe that if any rational person was exposed to these problems, school would be the least of their worries. I have allowed 3 years of disappointment to pass by because I was never determined, motivated, or had a supportive social group. Getting the highest mark possible in each class will result in a strong and upward trend in my GPA of 1.59, and I am excited to see how high it rises. Please let me show you the type of person I once was, the driven, time-managing, efficient student I used to be before I lost sight of it all. I will be the student that makes the university proud as well as myself and my family. There is a fire inside of me that was not there before, I am just waiting for classes to start so I can prove myself. Now, I apologize for essentially repeating myself, but my intentions have never been clearer. Pursuing my education is the most important thing in my life, and although I have had difficulty coping with adversity in the past, I believe that my life experiences have made me stronger as a person and more resilient to the unfortunate circumstances that arise in life. By the time school comes around in 3 months, I would have further solidified my mental confidence and determination into achieving the grades necessary to pursue a profession in chemistry.

Thank you.