Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Jenn Stephenson,
I am appealing to drop ECON 212 (Fall, 2020), ECON 222 (Fall, 2020), and ECON 250 (Fall, 2020), due to extenuating circumstances beyond my control.
Due to our region¿¿s COVID-19 lockdown policies and Fall 2020 being my first semester taught online, there were extenuating circumstances, beyond my control, that affected my performance in these courses. These extenuating circumstances relate to my mental health and a new mental illness diagnosis of ADHD. For further explanation, in February 2020 I was diagnosed with an anxiety and panic attack disorder. I had never been diagnosed with a mental health disorder before this date. Since February 2020, I have been trying to implement lifestyle changes to help manage my symptoms. However, the combination of the lockdown and virtual learning increased my anxiety symptoms and made them unmanageable. I received academic accommodations in February 2020, but my academic accommodations were never adjusted to align with virtual learning more effectively and I felt they were not suited to the expectations of virtual learning. Since September 2020, my anxiety and panic attack symptoms significantly increased. Despite seeing a psychotherapist and receiving medication, I was still struggling. I found it difficult to focus, pay attention, and was easily overwhelmed. I now understand that my inability to focus, the physical side effects of exhaustion, sleep problems, and difficulty completing school work were a result of my ADHD symptoms, which I was recently diagnosed with during the Winter semester, being intensified by my anxiety symptoms. I was not being treated for ADHD during the Fall semester, resulting in my poor academic performance in these three Econ courses. Once I was diagnosed in February 2021, began seeing a counsellor, and was prescribed medication for my ADHD by my Physician, my overall mood and ability to focus improved and I was able to perform at my normal academic level during the Winter 2021 semester.
To explain how I was affected, I felt completely unprepared for virtual learning this semester. I did not know what to expect before September 2020, such as if my courses were going to be synchronous or asynchronous. I found out in September that my ECON courses were fully asynchronous. I believe the setup of the ECON courses and asynchronous learning fully contributed to my increase in anxiety, panic attacks, and ADHD symptoms. The complete loss of a real classroom environment, the transition to only learning on laptop, having little to no interactions with professors, no real-time interactions with classmates, as well as the varying and confusing setups of each course were very overwhelming and mentally exhausting. For instance, some of my Professors would send out constant notifications each time new content was posted, creating stress with every notification, and would not respond to emails, even when some of my emails regarded questions about my current academic accommodations. The feedback on assignments was also vague and I felt that there was never a proper environment or person identified who I could contact with specific concerns or questions about my assignments. Given that I was struggling with ADHD, asynchronous teaching also made it extremely difficult for me to follow along with course content, assignments, and quizzes. I often felt that I was spending more time on assignments and quizzes for all three courses than I was on the course content. There were also days where I felt so depressed, I could not get out of bed, I would begin crying as soon as I logged into OnQ, I was having panic attacks almost daily that would last for hours and take a significant amount of time to recover from. My inability to focus due to ADHD created a cycle of anxiety and panic attacks. My panic attacks have always been triggered by school stress and it resulted in me struggling to breathe, unable to move, and unable to stop crying. After a panic attack, I would then fall into an episode of depression, where I was extremely self-critical, unmotivated, and felt so anxious that I was exhausted by simple tasks like showering, eating, and doing laundry.
My future plan is to change my course of study, by switching from an Economics major and Political Science minor, to just a Political Science major. I have the majority of the required credits and grades to successfully change to this plan and I will be able to take additional POLS 200 level courses as I enter my third year at Queen¿¿s University. Now that my ADHD and other mental health issues have been properly addressed, my academic performance has improved during the Winter semester, compared to my Fall semester courses. I believe that given my courses taken in the Winter semester, that I can successfully move forward at Queen¿¿s as a Political Science major.
Sincerely,
Allyson Hunt