Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom this may concern,



My name is Sonali Sivakumar, I just finished my first year at Queen¿¿s BISC campus for my BScH. I am a hard worker and commit 110 percent into all my school work and extra curriculars. I am requesting a CR in MATH 121, CHEM 112, PHYS 106, BIO 102, BISC 100 and BISC 101. I was having a great first month and half at Queen¿¿s, my grades were good, my health was great, and I was getting ready for midterms. Sunday October 14th was the start of my medical troubles. During this letter I will be disclosing some health information because I have explained this situation to my profs and Dr. Anna Taylor already because some people did not seem to understand medical issues they can¿¿t see. Ironic because the troubles I was having was with my sight, I was seeing spots at first then progressed to seeing things that weren¿¿t there. This odd effect with my sight was followed by massive headaches and unimaginable pain that was in my frontal and temporal lobe. This extreme physical pain leads me to many other visits to the hospital and clinic which took away time from my classes and to study. In the coming weeks I started frequenting more visits with my doctor in the UK and they kept bringing me in to see different specialists because they couldn¿¿t figure out what was wrong with me. I was on 3 different kind of medication which the doctors were testing out to see what would work. One of them was too strong for me and lead me to be extremely drowsy for about a week. I was told to keep a journal after this of when my pain had occurred. Finally, near the end of the semester I saw a specialist who informed me that I most probable had aura migraines and was just unaware of this. This leads to me to going back home over Christmas break and getting the right medication from my family doctor. That medication has greatly helped and have not had any other aura migraines since. Then comes second semester thinking everything was going to be good and better than last semester. It was for a bit. I had an issue with another student who I assumed was one of my good friends and one night when a lot of people were away traveling an incident occurred. I¿¿d rather not get into the specifics of that, but I have been seeing a counselor because of the event. It has been extremely hard to even being up this day and one of the reasons why this appeal is so late only my counselor and roommate know of the event that took place and I can¿¿t seem to even hold back my tears writing this, but it hurts so bad to mention or talk about the day where everything changed for me. Saying it was hard having been at BISC and see this person every day in my hallways in the cafeteria talking with my friends and acting like nothing had happened would be an understatement. I was mad confused angry and kept thinking what I did wrong to deserve what had happened to me I kept thinking why I didn¿¿t save up more or was a little richer to travel away during the time with my friends but alas we can¿¿t change the past. I¿¿m trying to heal, and my roommate really helped me with helping book my first counselors' appointment to it becoming a regular thing. I have never felt so lucky to have a roommate like that and unlucky to have been in a situation like that. This incident occurred around the same time as 2 big BIO 103 labs, I stated both report and couldn't finish either because overtime I would get thinking for too long, I would start to remember what had happened to me and cry. I couldn¿¿t explain this to my BIO prof frankly I had no idea how she is a sweet prof with a huge heart. That is why I am asking for Aegrotat standing in BIOL 103. The difficulties I faces at that time and even now some days is the most I¿¿ve felt in my life having to do school meet with friends and carry on everyday as if nothing had happened and I am a very social person so having to hide the fact that I was seeing a counselor too was just all so hard on me. My grades slipped again but with going to office hours with my profs and catching up I was able to pass most of my courses but BIO 103 because of the two big assignments I missed around the same time as many other assignments in other classes. I went into this school year thinking I was going to be a life sci major, and I still hope to with the right help. My grades mean a lot to me and I work hard every day but I¿¿m still not sure why what happened, happened to me. But again, I have come to see I can¿¿t change that. I hope the University of Queen¿¿s understands the type of extreme circumstances I went through clearly impacted my academic performance throughout the school year. Again, my apologies with how late this was but it really took so much out of me to complete this letter.