Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Queens University Appeal Board,

I am writing to submit an appeal to waive the requirement to withdraw for one year. Given my extenuating circumstances throughout my first year of university, I will also request to late drop BIOL 103, CHEM 112, MATH 121. My name is Madelyn Briggs. I am currently studying General Science at Queens and going into my second year. I wish I could say my university experience thus far has been fun, exciting, and enjoyable. Although, I have had some enjoyable moments most of them have been shadowed by the stress, loneliness, and depression I felt.

In the beginning, I thought I was ready. I was prepared mentally and physically for school, hockey, a new living situation, and social life. School and hockey began and picked up very quickly within a few months I started to get extremely overwhelmed, my anxiety skyrocketed, and I started falling behind in both my academics and my athletic performance. It was around the beginning of November that it got bad, and I started to see a therapist. I tried almost everything in the book to improve, I tried a set routine, and I tried using monthly weekly, and daily calendars. I started studying in the library to try and keep myself focused, I tried to go to the gym once a day to destress and work on my athletic performance. After a few weeks, nothing had changed and I decided to try using a tutor again, I had weekly lessons with my old tutor for Chemistry, Biology, and Physics on top of my hockey schedule, classes, studying time, team meetings, and meetings with my therapist. That I felt as if I had no time to myself, I was overworking myself and had to go to bed late and wake up early just to create enough time in a day. It was a constant cycle.

During my December exams, I thought I was on the right track. I had a study schedule, I started going for walks to destress. Until around the last week in a half before exams, there was a covid outbreak and a few girls on my team had it as well as a few people on my floor and I that time close contact meant that I had to stay in isolation, being alone constantly put me right back to my previous state of depression and bad anxiety which made it very hard to want to do anything. Right before a few of my big exams, I got a text from my mother saying that my sister had to be admitted back into the hospital for emergency surgery. My youngest sister thirteen has had an infection in both her inner ears for a few years now and has had multiple surgeries. This time when my mom texted me, we found out she was going into brain surgery as the infections had spread to her skull and into her brain. She was going into an extremely long surgery that I knew almost nothing about, and I was in total isolation not able to see my family or be with anybody during this time. I couldn??t focus or get out of bed for a long time after that except when I needed to walk to my exams.

After my exams, I went home and took a break from it all, I went back to work, started going to the gym, and got on the ice again. I tried to get back to my normal self, and even when I went back to Kingston and school, I kept the same routine. It was working, and I had a few calls with Athlete Services Coordinator Breanna Burton about trying to find ways to balance both hockey and academics. I started seeing my therapist more to stay on top of my mental health and well-being. I began studying with some other people in my program, and seeing my tutor again, created more time to study efficiently and not be tired. After a while that started to fall apart as I got busier, I tried to keep on track, but I felt as if I was always tired. Then around the end of March, my parents told me they were separating. This came at a very hard time for me as I knew I didn??t do very well on my first set of exams and wanted to do better on these. But it was very difficult to stay positive as I felt put in the middle of the separation as my sisters would always call me to talk as well as my mom. I started to see my therapist with my parents as we thought it might help the situation. But after a few meetings, I thought it was only making it worse for me. At this point, I had already taken one exam and had the rest of them within the week. I tried to keep focused and keep outside thoughts out, but it was very difficult, and I was constantly thinking about every little thing. Which made it hard to leave my bed and even get sleep, again.

Within this letter, my main goal was trying to illustrate how hard I tried different resources to help myself and how I tried to keep it together. Now I know that there are worse things that could??ve happened to me, or my family and that people go through worse. Though I tried my hardest to stay on track and find better ways for me to do better it felt as if I was taking one step forward and three steps back and it was all out of my control. This summer I have taken a course to try and get my marks up I have been continuously training for hockey and getting prepared for this coming school year in hopes my appeal to waive the RTW is granted. I continue to see my therapist once a week, and my sister has not had any complications since her and has healed perfectly. I appreciate the time that was taken to read this letter and I hope that this has given you more insight into how my first year of University at Queens was for me.

Thank you for your consideration,

Madelyn Briggs
20278645