Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Respected Associate Dean and Review Members,

I am requesting to drop: MATH 120, MATH 110, PROF 110, PRAC 110, CHEM 112, PHYS 104, and waive the requirement to withdraw from studies for a year. I am asking that my appeal be considered because of the issues I have endured, and time I have had to reflect on this.

From the beginning of the academic year, it was hard not to feel isolated. At first I thought it was okay, especially since everyone was going through the same issue in some manner. I did not take the feelings of isolation seriously enough, and was instead treating it as an inconvenience. This ended up severely impacting my academic performance, decision making, mood, and relationships. When the Fall 2020 term began, school started off well. The course work did not seem excessively difficult, and I incorrectly concluded I could successfully complete the courses I was enrolled in without much difficulty as I compared University to high-school. In high-school, most, if not all, of my courses seemed fairly straightforward and simple, so I went into University with that same mentality, not knowing it would be a detriment. I thought taking 6 Courses in the first term was reasonable; not only that, I took courses such as MATH 120 and MATH 110 instead of the lighter MATH 121 and MATH 111 unnecessarily, again for the same reason I took 6 Courses in the first semester (because I thought it would be like high-school). By making the mistake of taking a larger and more dense set of courses, I set myself for academic failure. Even though I was feeling overwhelmed with the work I had to do, that on its own may not have been such an impairment if I was able to connect with other students in my classes. In my online classes, I found that everyone was extremely reserved, and I did not feel like I could communicate with others in either an academic or social capacity. I know for a fact that this was a major influence in my academic performance, as I took ASTR 101 in Fall 2020 and did fairly well in that course. The reason I succeeded in the class was because I had a friend from high school that happened to be doing the same course. In spite of being online, I was able to use our prior relationship as the connection I needed to ground me in my work for that course; we were able to have deep conversations about course content, assignments, labs, discussion posts, but also about the events in our personal lives and how we were feeling about how life in quarantine. In contrast, none of the other courses had a person that I knew. Despite my efforts in making connections, everyone was extremely reserved in this environment, rendering me feeling isolated and initiating my depression. In my opinion, this ended up being a severely debilitating cycle which appeared impossible to get out of. Because I could not make connections and escape my feelings of isolation, I could not perform as well academically, which in turn made me feel worse and less inclined to make connections. As for the effects my mental state had on my education specifically, I started missing classes due to low motivation, and eventually the feelings of isolation and hopelessness overwhelmed me to the point I stopped participating in class entirely by Winter 2021. I did not read many emails that were sent to me regarding university, I did not open OnQ or anything that had to do with school. I just left and tried to pretend there was nothing wrong, when in truth everything was going poorly. I did however, in late January, try to contact Queens support services, and they paired me with a kind upper year student to help me with academic planning. After working with them, I unfortunately felt like nothing changed at all. The things they tried to help me with were all things I knew that I ought to do, but I could not shake this feeling of deep despair which made it impossible to help myself. During February, my parents had taken me to a physician because of how scared they were for me in regards to my mental health. They were wondering why I was feeling so hopeless and worthless. As it turns out, a part of my motivation issue was due to the fact that I had extremely low Vitamin D, a vitamin often correlated with motivation and liveliness. My low Vitamin D levels, paired with my symptoms of depression, prevented me from fulfilling my academic obligations. By February, I had completely stopped viewing anything school related and was utterly lost as to what I should be doing.

In short, I am humbly requesting to waive the request to withdraw because I have spent the last five months deeply reflecting on what went wrong the past year, and am asking to drop the five courses I have listed because of the mental health issues that I have endured this year. I strongly believe with the aid of friends and family, therapists and psychiatrists, and with the new academic plan I have in place, I can be reintegrated into University and will be able to succeed both by personal and academic standards. I know my academic enrolment is my responsibility, however due to deteriorating mental health due to isolation, I found myself lacking the connections I needed to thrive.

If my appeal to withdraw is waived and I am permitted to drop all of the courses I have listed, I am confident that I can turn a new leaf. With the knowledge, wisdom, and structure that I have developed these past few months, I believe I can succeed given another chance. I know that there will be stumbling blocks along the way, but this time around, I have tools and strategies in place to combat the issues as they come. I know all I need is a fresh start at Queens.

Thank you for the time and consideration you put into reading and responding to this letter. I really hope that I can return in the Fall 2021 semester and start anew.


Sincerely,

Jeremy Varghese