Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Office of Administration

I hope this letter finds you well. Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to review my appeal. Today, I am asking you to consider removing my PHYS118 grade from my transcript, this will increase my overall all average, thus providing me the opportunity to be accepted into the second-year life science program or allow me to choose Chemistry as an alternate.
Throughout this year, Covid-19 has taken a big toll in my life. Firstly, I am a kinesthetic learner which made it extraordinarily hard for me to learn in an environment that is strictly online. With this barrier put in place, I was unable to physically participate or watch and ask questions at the same time, making it extremely hard to understand and learn complex questions. I am an extremely hard worker, I tried to find a way to remove this roadblock by asking extra questions in office hours and receiving extra help in my tutorials. Unfortunately, it was still too hard for me to gain a grasp on how to use equations through verbal instructions. Secondly, I am a very social person, being isolated from my friends, teachers, and the friendly social environment that university brings took an exceptionally large toll on my mental health. The stress and anxiety that followed did not help the situation. Having to work from home with little siblings running around the house and constantly interrupting my studies certainly did not allow me to focus as much as I wish I could have. The environment that surrounded my studies was noisy, my dad worked from home and had meetings all day long in the room next to me, this was another major distraction as I am a student who needs a quite workspace to concentrate and focus on preparing for exams, tests etc. Now because libraries were closed, and I was unable to leave the house it was a tricky situation to work around.
In the first term of the school year, I was enrolled in PHYS 104/106, although I made a choice to drop down to PHYS 118 because it had more opportunities to interact with several students. Doing this I had hoped I could make some friends and study the course material together, although once again this was exceedingly difficult since some students would not interact or participate in the break rooms our TAs provide during zoom calls. I am someone who learns a lot from studying in a group, thus making it tough to study the material on my own.
In April, my family had an unfortunate loss, my great grandmother passed away, whom my family and I were close with. Her passing profoundly affected my focus when it came to final exams because my family and I were unable to see her in her last moments due to house and hospital lockdown. My family that lives in El Salvador had a small ceremony for her passing and luckily my mother and I were able to set up a call to watch the ceremony. Before she passed, she had been going through a lot of medical troubles, which made it harder to put all of my attention into my schoolwork as I was constantly worrying about her, when trying to read over material from the course I continuously zoned out thinking about her. I still tried to focus as much as I could on my final exams and the last of the course work that had been giving out, though my mind was not in the right place.
In the future my plans are to retake PHYS 118 in September of 2021 in hopes to receive a better grade than I previously had. I tired extremely hard to earn the grades of all my courses, though I was not so fortunate in PHYS 118. I do not consider myself the type of person who purposely fails a class because they do not try as hard as possible or because they are just aiming to pass the class. I have always been taught from an early age that you must truly work for what you want because nothing in life comes easy. I am confident that if the decision to appeal my grade is accepted that I will not only be successful in my future planes at Queens University but as well as studying something that I love.

Thank again for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Mata