Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean of Studies,
My name is Alex St-Pierre, I am a first year student here at Queen¿¿s and I am appealing to be able drop MATH 110 (fall-winter 2014-15) past the deadline of February 27th.
My transition to Queens this year has been far less than perfect. I have been under a lot of stress both academic and otherwise. Coming to Queens has definitely not been what I expected but despite this I have work hard and pushed through to try and do the best that I can for myself. This whole year has been extremely hard on me and caused a lot of stress which has now lead to the problem of me missing an important deadline. To start I have been under a lot of academic stress and pressure. First year is about trying new things and is a huge learning experience, unfortunately I took some of the wrong courses and my family does not completely understand this. I seem to simply not be good at certain subjects, like Math 110, to start with, which I was unaware of. Despite this I have tried my hardest to work as hard as I can to get the best grades I can. Despite all the effort, time and hard work I have put into Math 110 it seems as though I cannot get results. I have made use of all my tutorial sessions and spoken with both my TA and my professor on multiple occasions for help. Regardless of these steps I have taken I cannot seem to do any better in the course. This whole year has been a much larger challenge than I ever thought it would be. To add to the academic stress I have been under I have also felt that I have been under pressure from my family, with them failing or doing things differently than other people does not seem like an option. I was supposed to be the one in my family who went to university and did great and had their life completely on track. Unfortunately this has not been the case for me, university has been a huge change and not everything has gone perfectly. Trying to explain to my family how hard this year has been has been a challenge and I feel extremely pressured to figure everything out and fix everything so that they feel better instead of so that I feel better. I have thankfully come to realise that this does not matter, as long as I have a plan to successfully complete my degree in a way that suits me then the opinions of others do not matter. However it is hard to overlook the opinion of your family and this has hindered my ability to make some decisions this year that could have helped me avoid circumstances such as this. There has also been a few other external factors that have affected my ability to drop Math 110 before the deadline. First, I have a part-time job that I need to pay for school. I have no choice, I have to work to be able to pay for school or else everything would have to go on a loan. Secondly, I am extremely homesick, despite my previous rant about the pressure my family has put me under this year I still miss them. My family is my world and I know they just want what is best for me, they just don¿¿t know how to go about it. All of these things have made it too hard to keep on top of everything this year. It is hard to perfectly balance everything and unfortunately some things get left out, in this case it has been being aware of and keeping on top of academic regulations and deadlines.
Next year I will be going home and taking courses online. I feel as though I need the extra year at home to mature more and learn how to handle everything better. It will be much less stressful for me at home and I hope to be able to do much better next year in the online courses I will take because of this. I hope that in taking a lighter course load and being at home that my grades will be better and I will be able to manage both academic work and a job better. In the specific case of Math 110 I plan to take Math 121 either this summer or next year online to make up the credit as I do need it for my Psychology degree (science). I hope that making these changes will give me the time and the opportunity to better myself and properly orient myself towards achieving my goals.
Thank you,
Alex