Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

My name is Victor Reshetnikov. I am currently in my 6th year at Queens, 10180379, trying to finish my BA in Political Science. I am writing to you today because I am appealing to drop several selected courses from my transcript during the 2019 Fall and Winter term, due to extenuating circumstances. The courses that I want to be dropped are as follows: POLS-385, POLS-465, GLPH-271, HIST-200, LLCU-209, and LIBS-100. In order to graduate with a BA, I only need 90 credits, I currently have 117, if the appeal gets granted, I will still have 99 credits. To give some back context about me, I¿¿m a professionally focused individual, if you were to look at my LinkedIn I have been working ever since I left Kingston, armed with the resources that Queens has taught me over my 4 year tenor and I have been doing well. But to me, the only thing that holds priority over my work is my family. Being a Russian immigrant, family values are held highly in our diaspora group, and as well as supporting the family you are born into.
The reason why I am requested to drop the selected courses is due to two reasons: 1. The grades that are on my transcript don¿¿t reflect my academic ability as I had extenuating circumstances during the same time, which I will explore further. 2: I am in the process of applying to graduate, but unfortunately my GPA is .14 too low too graduate (need a 1.6 GPA, currently have 1.44GPA).
I have attached two different letters in my appeal that talk about my mental health and how it affects me. The first one is directly from QSAS verifying that I have accommodations, while the second attach is a copy of a letter from my Counsellor during my time in Kingston, Meghan Stouffer Leuprecht. This letter will be able to verify the following information. I was diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety in Fall of 2018, despite the fact that I felt that I struggled with these disabilities even in high school. But being from an Immigrant Russian family, mental health is not a believe that my parents share with me, so I was only fortunate enough at Queens to get help as my family was not around me to see this, and to scold me over it, in fact neither of my parents know about my therapy sessions to this day. Meghan Stouffer Leuprecht provided me with great insight on how to cope with some of my family issues, and during my time at Queens everything seemed a bit better. A lot of my issues come from my relationship with my father, and as you can see during my 2016 Appeal to Withdraw for One Year, the trend continued. Back then, my father was struggling with alcoholism, to the point where I had to go back home every other week to support my brothers and mother financially and physically. Picking up jobs on the weekend and caring for my then-7-year-old brother. Not to provide some self pity or excuses, but this is a lot for a 20-year-old with mental health problems. To this day I help my family financially, to the point where half my (full time equivalent) paycheck goes to pay my family¿¿s bills, and when I¿¿m not helping financially, I am taking care of my now-11-year-old brother. Living in a traditional Russian patriarchal household, my mother takes care of the house and the food, my job is to take care of my 11-year-old brother, either through helping him with homework or the usual ¿¿babysitting¿. But my father does not partake in this whatsoever, so it is my responsibility to do so, being the older brother.
With some backstory provided, I want to get into the circumstances that took place during the 2019 Winter and Fall terms. In winter of 2019 I had to move back home after my 4 years at Queens, unfortunately I didn¿¿t complete my degree on time back then so I would have to be doing online courses, which I have no problem with. But unfortunately moving home was not easy. As previously mentioned, being home for me is not the perfect environment when trying to accelerate my academic and professional career, with supporting my family, I sometimes fail to find time to complete my own tasks, as family takes priority. Moving back home has proven a difficult task as I¿¿d often have to resort to either missing out on work, or missing out on schoolwork, which would start a snowball effect of me missing out on work, falling into depression and having panic attacks, which would shut me down, making me pickup the work I missed out on very difficult. This is also stated in my QSAS letter. And that¿¿s exactly what happened, as it is evident in my latter grades in the semester.
Fall of 2019 was a really difficult semester and a time in my life. With supporting my family being one of my main priorities, I was unfortunately let go from a company that I worked for a while, bearing me with no ability to help my family financially. I was trying to build a career out of that job, and it being my first serious job out of university, I was completely devastated when I heard the news. They fired a total of 14 people out of a 16 hiring class. I haven fallen into a deep depression, and although it may sound inadequate writing it here, but I felt useless, and went down a really big spiral. Then towards the end the fall semester, my father lost his job as a Contractor. With COVID numbers rising internationally at that time, my fathers employer decided to close down his firm prior to the lockdowns, leaving my father without a job. The only breadwinners in the house were out of a job, and this taking place all early December. I had to pickup part time jobs on the side to provide some form of financial support. I used to be in sales, but with the given situation, I had to become a technician at a Mr. Lube, fixing cars. I would often had to stay late because of the hourly wage, and this has devastated my exam season, as I failed 3 exams that semester. I know that working and being in school is done by many students, but supporting a family (and not one¿¿s future endeavours), and coping with mental health problems, it often leaves me wishing for more time in the day so I can get everything done.
Now, if you were to look at my recent grades from the 2020 Summer term, it is clear that I can achieve high grades, and it is not a matter of my academic/mental ability, but rather the circumstances I was in at the time disallowed me to perform to my fullest academic ability. And despite with COVID still being around, everything is back to normal at home. In July, I was able to find a job for my father that didn¿¿t require him to work with his hands, but where he could work online through his computer. (COVID restrictions hit the construction industry hard). Following after that, a connection from Highschool reached out with a job offer for me, to work with governments selling cyber security. I have finally found a job where I could utilize my future degree, and I now work with industry experts to help secure national government programs. I hope that this letter was able to illustrate the circumstances that I had, and that my grades are not a true reflection of my academic/mental ability. Hopefully, if this appeal gets granted, I will it would allow me to focus on my work, to accelerate my career, to utilize the political science knowledge Queens has bestowed on me when working with governments, so one day I could give back to Queen¿¿s the same way it gave to me during my time here.