Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Hello,

My name is Hannah Besrai and I am appealling to drop BIOL 103 after the course drop deadline. Switching to online school for the first half of the semester gave me the impression that I was doing better in BIOL 103 than I actually was. When the university switched back to in-person courses, I soon realized that I was further behind in BIOL 103 than I had initially thought. In BIOL 103, to accommodate for online schooling during the first half of the semester, all labs and many in-person activities such as collaborative tests were pushed to the second half of the semester. This method of teaching gave me the impression that I was doing fairly well in the course because we had only done online tests up to that point. Once we got back to in-person classes, I realized this was not the case. I wanted to try and raise my mark in the course before resorting to dropping it, so I waited before making the decision to drop the course. The course drop deadline occurred around the same time classes went back to in-person, so this did not provide me with enough time to determine whether to drop the course or not. One or two weeks ago, I realized that the BIOL 103 course was causing me too much stress and not allowing me to fully concentrate on my other four courses. I have also realized that there is a different BIOL course that fits my interests and my planned major (Environmental Science) and minor (Political Studies) that I will take this summer. The BIOL 111 course I plan on taking is more suited to my interests because it connects organisms more to the surrounding environment. Heavy cell biology courses such as BIOL 103 are not needed in my Plan. I realize that if I retake the same course, that mark will be replaced with the mark I am receiving now, however I have realized there is a better biology course I would prefer to take instead. Based on this reasoning, on Sunday, March 20, I decided I wanted to drop the course. I looked at many Queen's websites to determine if I was past the drop deadline and if it was still possible to drop the course after the date. I was not aware the deadline had already passed. Also, earlier in the year, I was given the impression that dropping a course after the deadline would result in academic penalty, but I did not know an appeal was necessary as well. Since I am a first-year student new to the university structure, I had never heard of an appeal process being needed, as this information was not easily accessible to me. I realize that I should have known about this previously, and I made some mistakes in learning about the drop deadlines, however I also believe that some of this was out of my control, especially with the switch from online to in-person schooling.

I determined that I wanted to drop the BIOL 103 course on Sunday, March 20, however I then got sick and was unable to complete many of the tasks I needed to do, including this appeal. I am currently feeling symptoms from the flu which limited my abilities to write this appeal in a timely fashion. (I did not get documentation from a dcotor or clinic to prove this, however I did take a photo of the rapid antigen test I took while I was sick to ensure it was a flu and not Covid.)

I also want to note that, my marks in all of my other courses are good marks. I am only having trouble in this one course because of the odd formatting and the difficult switch of this specific course from online to in-person classes.

Thank you so much for your time and for considering my appeal.

Sincerely,

Hannah Besrai