Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean (Academic),

I am appealing to drop PHIL 240 (Summer, 2021) and PHIL 263 (Summer, 2021).

Early summer, I was struggling with severe substance abuse while attempting to cope with my sisters' deteriorating mental health (two of my younger sisters were struggling with significant mental health disorders and both had required recent hospital emergency admissions). Despite these circumstances, for the beginning of the academic term, I was still managing to fulfill the requirements of my summer courses (those being PHIL 204, PHIL 240, PHIL 263, and ENGL 100). These circumstances changed on June 18th when my mental and physical health collapsed and I was admitted to the North Vancouver Urgent and Primary Care Centre. I was then strongly advised to take a period of time off school to focus on my personal recovery. For the weeks following my trip to the Urgent Care Centre, I was not able to participate in any activities, let alone complete any school work. This meant that I was unable to complete the final assignments for PHIL 204, PHIL 240, and PHIL 263. A few weeks after my visit to the Urgent Care Centre, I felt healthy enough to attempt to work on the final assignments from my courses. So, at the beginning of July, I submitted a request for academic consideration. On July 2nd, I received severe/serious academic consideration for PHIL 204, PHIL 240, and PHIL 263. I decided to drop ENGL 100 because I was within the drop deadline and I had completed less than half of the course. Around this time, I started to reach out to my Professors to attempt to complete the missing final assignments. For PHIL 204, I was able to receive an extension for the final exam which I submitted in July (I received a final grade in this course). For PHIL 240, I was also able to receive an extension for the final exam. Because I was still recovering from my circumstances, it took longer than anticipated to finish the final exam and I submitted it two weeks later than the assigned date. I have not heard from my Professor since agreeing upon a date for my final submission and the course is still listed as IN. For PHIL 263, I reached out to my professor multiple times over the summer about the opportunity to complete the required work. I did not receive a reply and I currently have an F in this course. Around August, I gave up trying to reach out to my Professors because it was putting excessive strain on my mental health by providing a constant reminder of the pain I had endured during that period. I did not think about these courses until October when I reached out to the Office of the Ombudsperson who advised me to reach out to the Academic Consideration Team. I reached out to the Academic Consideration Team at the end of October in a last attempt to have my PHIL 240 assignment graded and to have the opportunity to complete the final assignment for PHIL 263. The Academic Consideration Team sent multiple emails to my Professors and they are yet to receive a response. It is for this reason that I am appealing to drop these courses.

Looking to the future, I would like to acknowledge that since I have had the time to focus on my mental and physical health, I have been able to recover from substance abuse as well as find alternative methods to mitigate the stress and anxiety caused by my sisters' conditions. It was the significant progress of my own recovery that has allowed me to study at Queen's this academic term. Despite feeling healthier, I still took some measures to ensure that I maintain a consistent level of academic achievement. Namely, for this current term (Fall, 2021), I have reduced my course load from five courses to two courses in order to maintain a high level of academic achievement while being able to continue to emphasize my personal health. I plan to continue with a reduced course load until I feel that this can increase without further harm to myself or my academic goals; at that point, I will likely consult an academic advisor about my plan for completing my studies.