Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear the Associate Dean

I am writing to appeal to drop STAT 263 (Winter, 2020). Upon meeting with an academic advisor, we decided that it would be in my best interest to drop STAT 263 as I would like to lighten my course load and focus on other course work during this semester. I tried several times to get an appointment the week prior to the deadline to drop a course and was unsuccessful as the appointments were fully booked; therefore, I met with an academic advisor on March 2nd.
I strongly believe that I need to lighten my course work in order to be successful this term, as well to better my physical and mental health. I have suffered from 4 concussions in the previous year that has resulted in long term side effects such as; migraines, trouble concentrating, and memory issues. These side effects are directly impacting my work by hindering my ability to complete work and understand concepts that take more time in STAT 263. Due to migraines I am forced to take time away from schoolwork. The issues with concentrating and memory that I am having, result in extra time being spent on smaller details that I normally did not have to before the concussions. Further, I have been struggling with mental illness for the last 5 years. In my first year of Queens university I struggled with this to a new extent than I had before, thus directly impacting my grades. Since then, I have learned to cope with and deal with troubling thoughts. However, since December 2019, I have noticed that my mental health has taken a turn and has gotten progressively worse. This results in multiple effects that impact my school such as; panic attacks, loss of motivation, loss of appetite, etc. This is very concerning for me as I am seeing direct impacts in my grades and do not want my mental health to impact my school the way it has in the past as I am currently trying my hardest to recover my GPA from my first year at Queens University when I initially struggled with my mental health.
Although majority of my courses have been impacted by my current state, I am choosing to appeal STAT 263 because despite the effort that I have made to the best of my ability at the moment, I have failed my midterm. In order to do well in the course, I will have to dedicate all of my time to this one course in order to pass the exam. By doing this, I will not have enough time to dedicate to my other courses and I do not believe I will be successful with my current setbacks that are out of my control. I would like to lighten my course load in order to focus on other course work that has already been impacted negatively; therefore, I believe that being in four courses instead of five will allow me to prioritize these courses to do the best that I possibly can considering the circumstance.
In order to look after my physical and mental health I will be visiting with a health care provider in order to take steps in the right direction to create lasting progress in both my physical and mental health. This is important to me because I take my schoolwork very seriously. Moving forward, I have decided to take an extra course over the summer term and then I will enroll in STAT263 over the fall school term with a lighter course load. I believe that this will be the optimal route for not only success in my schoolwork but also my physical and mental health.

Kindly,
Skylar Potkolabovic
20069210