Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: The year 2020 and 2021 has been an extremely difficult year for me, there has been emotional, physical, and mental roadblocks and hardship that I have been going thru which has affected my entire life throughout university this year. When I was in high school, I would hear and learn about what depression is and how it effects people¿¿s lives in a huge way. When I would hear someone explain what exactly depression feels like, I would always think to myself ¿¿I find that hard to believe¿, ¿¿Just wake up and get up, its easy¿, ¿¿just deal with it¿, I didn¿¿t think anything of it of how serious is actually is, until I started becoming the one who once had disbelief on depression and what comes with it, to the person who faces it every single day. It is a very empty and unmotivating space that you fall into, and it is my reality. Especially with everything going on in my life and the world right now, it makes things much harder. In my 3rd year at Queens university, I met the girl that I once thought I would grow old with and love for the rest of my life, until I noticed some change in behaviour and my fears became reality, I was not prepared for anything, so hearing about the disloyal dirty unfaithful actions and decisions she made with someone else, crushed me completely. I was in such a depressive chapter in my life, I decided to simply stay inside, every single day. I thought it would help me to be to myself, but it just made me take on wrong decisions as well. I started giving up and nothing doing the things I loved doing. To make things much more complicated and amplified, the whole world was introduced to COVID-19, and we all really saw the seriousness and scare about what COVID-19 brought and how it literally put a PAUSE on the world and shut down everything, including school. Being depressed inside your room knowing you can leave and grab something to eat or go to the gym is one thing but being depressed inside your room knowing you cannot leave at all no matter what due to a global pandemic is another thing, and it just made things much worse. I was a student who loved to clear my mind and go to the ARC and have a good workout, but that was not allowed. I like going to restaurants to clear my mind and have a good meal, but that was not allowed, going to Stauffer library to study in peace who taken away from me, resources that students can use was taken away, and most importantly, the whole ideology of having a ¿student life¿¿, was gone because no classes were open, no lectures, no tutorials, I could not interact with other students and that¿¿s very important for someone who is deeply depressed to go and have someone to talk to, well I was not able to. I cannot go speak with my parents cause they wouldn¿¿t understand and I don¿¿t want them being sad and upset because of their son who is upset, I cant tell my housemates because I was not ready to open up about my emotions because I had no idea how they would react to it, I could not see my Sheikh about what¿¿s going on with my life, so everything ended up being bubbled inside me while I was locked inside my room, I stopped praying and been unmotivated to do so. I also made bad decisions and started to smoke marijuana in my room as it would help me forget about what is going on in the outside world, it would make me extremely lazy and tired always, there were times I did not shower in 2 weeks, I was a literal mess. From the last 1-2 year I have been in contact with QSAS and have been granted with accommodations for my academics, but with COVID-19 coming into play and how everything was shifted online, those accommodations became non-beneficial for me. As much as I like to do work on my computer, it was never the same, my peers were not around to help when I had questions, my private paid tutor was unable to meet with me to help with math content, my professors and TA¿¿s were not able to meet to explain content of the course, and as much as people would say ¿¿just email professor, or look at videos posted online¿, I simply cannot figure it out and learn that way, I have ADHD and a learning disability which makes everything difficult for me from understanding to applying, I have a formal letter which states what I have been diagnosed with that I will be uploading as well. To make things worse, with what is going on in the world affected my family as my brother, aunt, and 3 of my first cousins were infected with COVID-19. Everything around me felt like it was on pause as I had my younger brother in my head 24/7, every single one of them had very bad symptoms and for some reason within the past years, my anxiety would get so bad I would think about the worse situation possible and pray that it would not happen, I truly thought this was it for my brother and my family. I prayed every single day for my brother would get better and God listened. Eventually my brother and my family got better within time, and they got back to their daily lives too, which took a ton of stress and anxiety off my chest. I continued with my life and got back to my academics and tried to catch up, but missing all those weekly homework¿¿s, tests, and assignments all built up and crushed my motivation to catchup as I felt like no matter what I did, a failing mark was eminent.