Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean:


I am Dong xinyun who want to cancel the two F score(GNDS120 and HIST108) I got in the first semester last year (2020fall).


Since I have exceeded the deadline for submitting the appeal letter, I have to explain the reason why I miss the one-term appeal deadline. First of all, this is my first year in university. I am not familiar with the rules of this school, and I did not know that my F score could be cancelled. I got this information when i communication with teachers in the department of Art and Science by emaill, they said If you took the 2020/2021 academic year off you should have dropped all courses and could be eligible for an appeal.So I just realized that my grades had not been canceled. Secondly, I am an international student. Due to the time difference and distance teaching, this kind of study way always let me feel the lack of communication with school. Thirdly, after I submitted the Return to School Letter, I did not think about going back to Canada for further study. At that time, I just submitted the Return to School email in a hurry and suspended my study, and I have not care about the information related to the school. So the deadline was missed.


Last summer, I passed the Qbridge language course and became a first year student. I started my online course life. But gradually, I found that I was not adapted to online classes. In retrospect, there were two reasons that directly affected my academic performance.


First resaon is the time difference. There is a difference of 12 hours between China and Canada. Although most courses adopt the way of the recorded lectures, almost all of the tutorial in the afternoon (China time) in the morning. Therefore, it is very tiring for me to attend classes in the early morning, which greatly reduces my efficiency in class. At the same time, I need to use VPN to log on foreign websites in China, but VPN is not always stable (almost every VPN has this problem), and it usually takes me triple time to load a video uploaded by teacher.


The second and most important reason that affects my academic performance is the lack of social online courses brought. I really like ZOOM Qbridge class i took during the summer vacation. The interactive way of class and the homework with group activities made me feel like a real class. However, since the beginning of my freshman year, all the courses were recorded. I could not ask questions in class, and there was no group homework that required interaction among classmates. This state of distance learning let me lose my social connection. This feeling of loneliness makes me feel depressed.


What impressed me most at that time was that my best friend, who was also a freshman in China, lived a very rich life. She told me interesting and new things happened in her school every day. Such as meeting many new students from different places, joining various clubs, running for the Student Union, etc. Her description gave me a great sense of gap. Because in the first year of my college life, I only had classes in front of the computer every day without any social interaction, and even the tutorial where I could see real people started in every sleppy midnight.


My condition was getting worse and worse, I started to lose a lot of hair, I even felt a little depressed and sometimes I would burst into tears if I couldn't log in onQ. Although I knew that the only thing that could stop me from passing the course was myself, I really could not control my emotions well in that situation. At the end of the first semester, I gave up taking the final exams of these two courses and stopped studying immediately. To be honest, due to my emotional problems at that time, I had never thought that I would go back to Queen's University to continue my study. I just wanted to finish everything as soon as possible.


However, after a period of rest at home, I recovered my original energetic state. I decided to return to Queen's University to study. Most important is after this period of time, I think I have become more mature, I will not escape or have great emotional ups and downs when I meet difficulties, I choose to face those difficulties now. In addition, I am confident that I can complete my study well no matter what the circumstances are.


This is the first time for me to recall and write down the story of my online class during the epidemic. It is not easy to write down this experience. Sometimes I even feel that I go back to that depressed time while writing. I hope my two F grades can be cancelled.


Thank you for reading this. If you need any more documents, please contact me by email.