Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr Stephenson,

My name is Fotini Sioukas and I am in my second year studying a major in Sociology and a minor in Employment Relations. I am writing you this letter to appeal my ANAT 100 mark to not be shown on my official transcript due to the extenuating circumstance I was experiencing. Over the past few months, I have been experiencing some mental and physical health issues, that unfortunately had affected my summer 2021 course. My mental health began rapidly decreasing within the month of June. It got to the point where it began affecting my job and education. Within summer 2021 I had taken two courses which include EMPR 230: Human Resource Management and ANAT 100: Introduction to Anatomy of the Human Body. In my employment relations course, I didn't experience as much difficulty as I had prior knowledge from my first-year course as well as it was not as time-consuming. This course has a difficult form of evaluations and was not as demanding, therefore I was able to complete it with no difficulty. Whereas with ANAT 100, I had struggled remarkably, and it began putting a larger toll on more of my mental health. ANAT 100 had many evaluations that had a lot of memorization and required a lot of focus, that I could not accomplish. I was unable to concentrate and focus on my school work as I felt that my mental health had gotten the best of me and my mind. These two courses are difficult and both require a different set of knowledge and skills that unfortunately I was unable to give at the time. Towards the end of June, my mental health had decreased to the point where I ended up in the Emergency Room due to a panic attack and I was unable to breathe. It should have been my responsibility to drop the course prior to the end date but unfortunately with these turns of events I could not. I had also gotten blood clots in early July and was in the hospital again, which I notified my professor since it had been on the same day of assessments. After I had been released I had telephoned Solus and spoke with someone from the Arts and Science department and they had advised me to complete the course and then follow up with an appeal. They had suggested this as I had completed the majority of the course and my GPA is not close to the mark that I had finished within Anatomy. My GPA was 3.6 after completing the academic year 2020-2021, but it had then dropped to 3.45 with the Anatomy course. As you can see this is a large decrease and it worries me as I feel as it does not truly represent my knowledge and ability at Queen's. In my first year, the lowest mark I had received was a B. This shows how the C- is truly an outlier in my GPA, In the summer, I was enrolled to major in Health Studies, but I felt as if this course load may not benefit my mental health as it requires high demanding studying habits. Therefore, I spoke with an academic advisor and my doctor and chose another major that interests me but also has a lighter course load. I have also been working with my doctor to work on these issues in order to prevent them from reoccurring this year or any other year. As well as I am waiting to be contacted by a few specialists from Woman's College Hospital and Micheal Garron Hospital that will also be aiding me in these difficult times.
I am hoping you can take this into consideration while evaluating if I am eligible for an appeal. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Fotini Sioukas
20228897