Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom it may concern,

I am appealing to retroactively drop POLS 338.

For many people the pandemic has brought with it a whole new set of challenges. For myself 2020 and 2021 has brought with it the struggle of increased mental health issues. While I am not sure when I first started experiencing these issues, I first noticed them in my first year living in residence. While I made friends and was able to do fine in classes I am not sure if I was ever happy. My family would make comments and suggestions about how I always looked upset and unhappy. Their explanation for my unhappiness was the isolation, lack of structure compared to high school. That summer with the pandemic in full effect I tried to solve the issues they had noticed by keeping myself busy. I worked two jobs, and despite being busy all the time did not feel any better. The explanation from my family changed a little but centered around the isolation. That September I moved into a house near campus with some friends from first year. All courses were online, and I barely made it out of the house. I was starting to feel more depressed and anxious, and while I shared some of these experiences with my parents and friends, I kept them mostly to myself. As the year went on this worsened. When I returned home over the Christmas break my parents recommended that I start to see a therapist to talk about my mental health. My talks with him were good and things started to get a bit better. I ended the school year fine in terms of my grades, and my mental health was starting to improve. During this past summer I stopped talking to my therapist while I was working camp as I thought being in one of my favorites and most comfortable places would solve the problem. However, I learned that mental health issues don't just go away. At the end of the summer, I made a plan to try and change my habits and try and create some structure for the school year. The plan mostly involved keeping myself busy, which in the past had always made me feel good. In high school I always played sports, had a part time job, and participated in clubs and associations. Therefore, this year I would take 6 courses (because I am in the certificate of business and wanted to stay on track for graduation in four years), got a part time job working for the Kingston 1000 Island tour boat and joined the men's club rugby. Despite my efforts and planning for what I thought would work, I was swamped, and my mental health continued to deteriorate. I was becoming increasingly unmotivated and starting to do poorly on assignments. I failed two assignments and started to hand in others late. This was happening for the first time in my academic career and made me feel hopeless. I continued to feel worse which then became compounded when I injured my Achilles and was possibly concussed during a rugby game. After the hit to the head, I was never followed up with from Queens services, so I continued on. Eventually I gave up on rugby as I felt like I was injured, holding the team back and lacking motivation. During this time, I would consistently miss class because I couldn't get out of bed and spent no time on readings or work. After Thanksgiving I talked with my parents and resumed work with my therapist who was trying to help me get back on track. I was able to keep up with most of my classes but the quality of work I was handing in was poor because I would do it all at the last minute which made me feel worse about myself. When it came time to write my end of term POLS 338 essay I couldn't do it, I felt like my lack of effort in the course left me with no base knowledge and could not write anything worth submitting. I left school and came home where my mom convinced me to just email my Prof. and see what he had to say. He emailed me back and recommended that I apply for a retroactive drop in the course as I had not submitted any work throughout the year. I??m not sure why this is the course that lacked so much of my effort compared to the other five. A possible explanation that I can think of is because there were only two deliverables and demanded less of my immediate attention. Had I not been pushed to reach out to Professor Amyot I would have happily accepted a failure in the course as I thought it would be the only thing that would be able to push me to try harder next semester. It is safe to say that this past semester in trying to get back on the horse, I have bitten off more than I could chew and dug myself a deeper hole.

I want to get back on track, learn from this semester and do a better job in the next one. While I know my mental issues will not just disappear, I plan on being better prepared for next semester. Especially given that it will be online again. First, I plan on lightening my course load back down to five courses where I can properly manage the workload. Further I am going to take the strategies that I worked on with my therapist to manage my mental health. Lastly, I am going to work with my parents to create a schedule to stick to. This schedule will have all the lectures, assignments, and readings along with blocked out time in my week where I will be working and taking breaks. By creating a structure for my week that I can follow and check off I should be able to get the necessary work done to stay on top of school.

Sincerely,
Simon Shay