Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear, Dr. Jenn Stephenson (Associate Dean, Academic, Student Services), and To Whomever Else It May Concern,
Hello, my name is David Monsen, and I am a first-year student at Queen¿¿s University. I am emailing you today to request a late drop of the following: HIST 108, CLST 131, GNDS 120, PHIL 157 from the first semester of this year. For your reference and some context, through the last couple years of my life I have been dealing with varying levels of anxiety and depression and this has impacted my academic studies and life for a couple of years now. Prior to the start of fall semester, I had been talking to a therapist for 3 months. However, we decided to stop about a week before the start of school. This proved to be a poor decision as I almost immediately started to experience increasingly higher levels of anxiety during the first few weeks of classes. At first, I was able to manage this and keep up with my schoolwork. However, as more time passed my symptoms got increasing worse, and eventually reached the point where they impacted my academic life again. I would often have anxiety attacks that would keep me up most of the night and into the morning and leave me unable to even get out of bed some days. As the weeks went by, I became more depressed to the point where I would often forget to even shower, staying in my room for most of the day. This massive drain on my mental health made it increasingly difficult for me to attend my classes and get my assignments done. This would then cause me more stress and anxiety, further bringing me down, culminating in a breakdown in December 2020. By seeing how badly my academic and personal life had deteriorated and with the help of my family, I stared to see a new therapist and have been consistently since December 2020. There is an attached letter from my therapist stating the issues I have been working through and that have affected my ability to effectively complete my academic studies listed in the appeal. I have subsequently taken a smaller course load and have had progressive success in keeping my mental health in a more stable place. I appreciate you taking into consideration my academic appeal for the late drop of these classes so that they do not reflect on my transcript and so that I may go forward successfully with a clean slate.
Sincerely,
David Monsen