Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences,
I am writing to request that my requirement to withdraw for one year from Queen¿¿s University be reconsidered and allow me to pursue my degree with an academic plan that will help me succeed and get in good academic standing with the school.
One of the major challenges I faced last academic year was the financial burden of school, rent and general living expenses. Between not working and saving enough over the course of the summer, OSAP cuts, and my family not in a position to help with my bills, within a few months of the school year I was starting to have serious money problems. Every month was a challenge to make rent payments and pay all my bills, a few times I had to ask my friend and housemate if he could help me out simply because I didn¿¿t have any way of paying. Not long after these problems started happening my focus starting shifting away from the priority which was school to figuring out how to make payments and worrying about that. My financial problems last year caused me huge amounts of stress and was all I could think about, diverting my attention away from what¿¿s most important - school. As part of my academic plan I moved into a cheaper more affordable apartment near campus, am employed full-time with the army reserves at the Princess of Wales¿¿s Own Regiment this summer to ensure I have enough money to pay for all my expenses next year, have completed a proper budget with the help of my parents for the year and will be continuing to work part-time during the school year as well. By better managing my finances and ensuring I have what I need at the start of the school year I feel that this will allow me to properly focus on my school work and classes, and not worry about anything else other than that. As it stands, I¿¿ll have savings if I work as much as I¿¿ve been contracted to this summer so that should help with future years at school as well.
In addition to my housing situation, for my second year of school I thought it would be a good idea to move into a house with 7 guys that liked to party. While it was lots of fun, maintaining the house to a reasonable standard was near impossible and it was hard to sit down and work with so many people and distractions going on all the time. My new apartment has only 3 people and they¿¿re both very academically oriented so I see the atmosphere being a lot better for working and concentrating on studying at the new house.
One of the big mistakes I made early on in the school year was failing to get the deadlines for all of my assignments and course work, and relying on false assumptions. This was a very terrible mismanaging of my academics because it wasn¿¿t until it was too late in 1st semester to fix as I had missed the deadlines for two term papers. I failed the two courses but I¿¿d also poorly managed my other courses by not taking care of getting information or doing the work sooner, which would have left me time to study more and go over my assignments several times before submitting. I regret not putting my full effort into my education last year on that front, and am going to fix that issue for next year. If given the opportunity to come back to Queen¿¿s again next year I¿¿m going to manage my time a lot better by being more proactive on due dates and getting to school work sooner so that I¿¿m on top of all my work in advance. This will ensure I don¿¿t miss my due dates and can do my best on each assignment. This caused a great deal of problems with my academics so fixing this issue will put me in a much better position to do well.
The courses mentioned that I failed first semester were POLS-261 and POLS-243, POLS-243 I would like to retake again but stay on top of my dates so I receive marks for essay and pass the course, and will get rid of the zero pulling my GPA down. I had made arrangements with my POLS-261 professor to have my paper graded with a penalty applied which would give me a grade in the course other than a zero but that changed hasn¿¿t yet been applied on my transcript so I will be following up on that issue again and boost my GPA.
For the reasons provided consisting of the key aspects of my academic plan, I feel that next year I can have a successful academic year and be in good standing with the university. This plan will deal with the major problems I faced last year, as I have my financial situation under control and will use my plan to get a proper handle on my school work. I¿¿m committed to doing what it takes next year to do well and I feel prepared that with my academic plan I will be successful. Thank you very much for any considerations.
Sincerely,
Sean Furey (20076495)