Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To: Associate Dean (Academics)

I am appealing to drop CISC251 (Fall, 2020). As you are probably aware by looking at my transcript, I am an extremely hard worker and try very hard to commit to everything I say I will commit to including CISC251. My father started showing signs of some health concerns that became more prominent in the summer. Within the past month, more prominent signs were made evident with the potential of for a life-threatening disease. Throughout the semester, my family and I have had more stress put on us than ever before. When I had chosen my courses in the summer, I hadn't planned to consider something so devastating and mentally exhausting to experience resulting from serious health concerns. I thought I could handle the courses I chose for the semester even if they were remote. After struggling more than I ever have throughout the semester all the way up to this point, I've realized for the first time more clearly than ever of the importance of putting my mental health first. Writing this appeal to begin with I hope shows you how much I have tried to make this work and that this request is out of the ordinary for me. I am not someone who normally quits. I knew I had passed the deadline to drop Fall term courses earlier, but with my persevering nature, I thought I could continue trying. But continuous inconclusive results with my father's health condition continuously put into question has put more pressure and guilt on me with being away from home during time that may be extremely limited.

With remote classes, I am constrained to the same room every day doing meetings, classes, studying in the same place, and experiencing disconnections in internet frequently which has added to the anxiety that I've been feeling. I have been using my friends and family as resources to express my stress to as I am not comfortable as of now speaking with those outside my close circle about a subject so tender to me. With everything online, I realized I am also struggling more than usual because I have no classmates I can reach out to for support since this course is not associated with the my major. Some of my mandatory core courses like PHYS350 have added even more stress with labs all online and so much pressure and time on me to figure out how to do everything essentially alone which has taken up more time I would have allocated towards other courses. I would like to drop CISC251 because it is not necessary for my major, and has been adding to my unexpected stress due to both my father's health concerns and the pandemic. The concerning news came just as I started the large project for the course in the second week of November, which I realized I could not mentally handle on top of everything.

Furthermore, as someone coming from a family where both my sister and I are attending Queen's, I am responsible for paying for some of my tuition and therefore taking on jobs. With my father being retired and now with a potential serious health concern, income for our education is at risk. Last year I had only taken on one job with a time commitment of 3 hours a week and was able to handle it because I knew there was a large chance I would be able to obtain some summer job. This year, I am working 15-16 hours a week on average during the school year because I anticipated a lot more difficulty in attaining a safe job in the upcoming summer due to COVID-19 which has added to my workload, resulting stress, and had a detrimental effect on my mental health. Trying to balance this with my course load and family stress has been more difficult than I ever anticipated.

Moving forward, I plan to prioritize my mental health and to spend more time with the fragile time I have with my family and will do so by entirely dropping my data analytics certificate, which CISC251 was being used for, focusing my studies towards the necessities of my degree. I originally was trying to broaden my career options by exploring this field, but have realized that I would like to focus my attention solely on education for my own self-preservation. If you would kind enough to accept my request to drop CISC251, then it would work perfectly since I no longer have any purpose of this course towards my future career of teaching. I also plan to take courses in the summer in order to lessen my course load during my fourth year in the case that I still feel the need to work 15 hours a week to compensate for the lack of summer jobs due to the pandemic so that an appeal will not be necessary for the remainder of my time at Queen's. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Jessica Chu