Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean (Academic),

My name is Megan Fournier and I am a second-year student in the Concurrent Education program here at Queens. I am writing with the intention of appealing the academic deadline for dropping courses, specifically to drop ENGL 237 that I am enrolled in for the Fall 2021 semester.

Despite consistent participation and effort within this course for the first half of the semester, and more broadly within each of my enrolled courses, I began to falter during the second half of the semester and this has since hindered my ability to complete the six-course workload that the Concurrent Education program accounts for. I am typically a hard-working and motivated student, as reflected in my final grades from my previous year at Queens which earned myself a spot on the Dean??s Honour List. However, approaching the second half of this semester I experienced mental health issues that impaired my academic ability and I lacked sufficient personal resources to continue my studies to the fullest extent. I found it very difficult to maintain this course load, and in an effort to persevere through this attenuating period, I focused my efforts on my remaining courses and therefore my abilities were redirected predominantly towards courses required for my degree. Alongside this, the switch from online classes, which have been the basis of my schooling for the past several years, and having to attend in-person classes became very taxing during this period. Attending classes in person became much more straining with the prevalence of the aforementioned mental health conditions, and therefore further inhibited my ability to meet course requirements. During this time, I attempted to continue my participation and academic efforts accordingly, but my mental condition had prolonging effects that continued well into the final weeks of the semester.

As a result of the perseverance of this issue, I have taken it upon myself to attend personal counselling sessions. I have begun this as of October and plan to continue this into the following semester to further aid in present mental health issues and be diligent in preventing it for further interfering with my academic career. Once beginning to work through some of the present mental health issues and corresponding effects, I decided, alongside the guidance of my counsellor, to pursue dropping an elective in order to alleviate some of the occurring stress, thus resulting in my attempt to drop ENGL 237. Unfortunately, this conclusion was reached after the Academic Drop Deadline, but I still felt as though this would be best for my overall academics. There has since been great upheaval in the administration of exams this season as a result of the Omnicron outbreak in Kingston. This lack of consistency and perpetual waiting period that students underwent to complete their exams this semester placed great strain on the student body in its entirety. During this waiting period, my action in my appeal was halted and has only since been suited for submission.

As of late, I have begun to feel relief from some of the previous effects and will continue to visit a personal counsellor to ensure that I continue to lead my academic career with my previous efforts in the following semester. This will allow me to maintain a five-course workload and furthermore be able to identify much earlier if this is not the case. I do not want this to further impact my academic career and therefore would greatly appreciate this allocation to drop my ENGL 237 course enrolment and prevent my mental health from interfering with my academics long term. Thank you for your time and efforts, and I appreciate your consideration of my appeal.