Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean(Academic),

I am writing this letter to appeal to drop two courses which have passed their drop deadline. These two courses are DEVS358, which I had taken in Fall 2020, and MUSC171 which I had taken in Summer 2020. After reviewing the appeal guidelines, I understand that I am able to appeal the MUSC171 course so long as I submit my appeal before the end of this current term, as the date stated online for the deadline was December 31st. Since I am within that deadline I am hoping my appeal will be considered for both courses. The reason for my appeal is due to personal circumstances in my family life, which had been further aggravated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the events directly influenced by it.
Before the Summer 2020 term, I had been achieving fairly high marks in my courses here at Queens. If you take a look at my transcript you can see that my Cumulative GPA is 3.04 so far, and I have worked hard to maintain my grades for the majority of my courses. This is proof in itself that when I am able to focus on my studies without external issues influencing my mental state, I am able to achieve my goals. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Queens had announced that all courses will be instructed online until further notice, and due to that as well as growing concerns with the uncertainty of this unknown disease, my parents wanted me to move back home, so I did. My father had his hours at work decreased due to the pandemic restrictions as well and that is where the problems began.
My father used to be an alcoholic, but I had not seen that side of him in the longest time, because nothing had triggered him. Family life was going great, his job was going great, and we had no problems that made him feel like he needed to drink. Unfortunately, the loss of his job and financial instability had caused him to turn to the bottle once again. Though he was receiving CERB, it was not at all sufficient to pay our monthly mortgage payments so my father had to continuously borrow funds throughout the majority of the pandemic quarantine period which made him even more stressed out. When my father drinks, the environment at home ends up being extremely toxic. He gets angry, yells and starts fights with anyone and everyone in his eyesight. Unfortunately this made the whole quarantine period extremely difficult because we had all been forced to live together once again for a long period of time and it was constantly deteriorating to my mental well being. For most of that period, coffee shops and libraries had also been closed so it was difficult for me to get out of my house and focus on getting my school work done.
It put me in a depressive state for the next few months. I had no idea what to do to make things better as everything in the world felt uncertain. I did not know when my dads financial situation would get better, but I hoped that it would soon so that this dark cloud over our home would be lifted. Even the financial stability would not guarantee that he would stop drinking because he had grown so dependent throughout that period, but I could only hope. The depression was overwhelming me and I could see no light at that point in time. I stayed in my room in the safety of my bed all day, so that I would not have to put myself through the mental torture of speaking to my parents. It felt as if every conversation with him turned into a nasty argument about how horrible I am and how useless I am, and how I do not do anything all day. It was just a vicious cycle. I had a moment of awakening and realized that I needed to get out of there if I wanted a better mental well being for myself.
So I began working a full time job in the film industry during the Fall 2020 term, which was still up and running. I was saving up to have a few months of rent ready so that I could move out and get my own room as soon as possible. That is why I had only taken one course for the fall term, so I would not be overwhelmed and could focus on working and saving up during that time. But as soon as my father found out I was planning on moving, it ended up being another toxic battle. It was another stream of negative words and phrases being thrown at me which put me into a depressive state again and I was unable to focus on completing the remainder of the course. Unfortunately at this point it was too late to drop the course as it was past the deadline. As soon as I was able to pick myself back up again, I began to do my research on how I would go about dropping these two courses from my GPA.
I believe that I truly am a hard worker, and I would like my GPA to be reflective of that instead of being impacted my these circumstances which have felt like they are outside of my control. I will be moving out of my home before the start of the winter term, so that when I start school again I will be able to give it my full effort. I believe that this change of environment away from my parents will benefit my mental health greatly and therefore allow me to focus on my courses as well as on improving my well being. I am hoping that by reading what I have been going through over the course of this period has shown you that I am working hard to improve my situation and truly do not want these grades on my record as they were impacted the issues at home which were outside of my control. I have also spoken to a counselor at Queens earlier in the semester about my personal issues and will ask them for a letter to attach to this appeal as documentation.

I look forward to hearing a response on this matter soon.

Best Regards,
Sobika Ganeshalingam
Student 20085124