Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Samuel Goodis 10061241

Academic Appeal

Hello, I am a BSc Honors student in PSYC. I have returned to school this last spring of 2022 and completed my final courses after several years in and out of school dealing with mental health and addictions circumstances. These extenuating circumstances caused me to fail to drop courses before the academic deadline in Fall 2019 and Winter 2021, and combined there are 7 F's on my transcript for classes I was never involved in but failed to drop on time. I am applying to Law School right now and without these multiple F's my marks would be sufficiently competitive, but with these grades remaining on my transcript it will significantly hurt my chances with admission to graduate programs and/or law school. Therefore, I am seeking to have them dropped/incomplete/not graded, whichever is appropriate, as long as they do not show up on my official transcript.

Leading up to the extenuating circumstances I was getting all A's and B's, then there is a dramatic row of multiple Fs that is uncharacteristic of me. This occurred because I was trying to finish my degree but was contemporaneously dealing with mental health and addiction issues, which forced me to seek inpatient treatment at Trafalgar Residential Addiction Treatment Services. I spent a month at inpatient at Trafalgar West Rehab Centre in Erin, Ontario in November of 2020. I was additionally in outpatient treatment for a few months in 2019 and then I had more outpatient at the start of 2021. The times here coincide with when I forgot to drop my courses before the deadline. The issues do not stem from bad marks on coursework, but a withdrawal from the university and a failure to drop the courses prior to the deadline dates. As you can see in my transcript, I re-enrolled and completed a similar set of courses in 2022 and completed them without issue.

The mental health aspects were in the scope of anxiety, depression, and adhd. I was originally prescribed anxiolytic and adhd-medications to use medicinally. Unfortunately, for whatever reason I found these substances so powerful at quelling the negative mental health symptoms, it led me to feel compelled to take more of them, and seek out illicit ones, far beyond the initial medical purposes to treat common psychological problems. This would lead me down the path of self medicating with substances (i.e. benzodiazepines, painkillers, alcohol, and stimulants) which eventually in 2019-2020 would become pathological and dangerous.
I found that I needed to address the dependence and addiction to these drugs in the scope of underlying mental health issues which made these dangerous substances so enticing. My time in both inpatient and outpatient rehab, time spent with my therapist, and with my family dr. and my psychiatrist all helped to alleviate these difficulties and address the root causes without relying on substances. During COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing isolation I became embroiled in addictions. To stop this, I did a detox and withdrawal management under medical supervision, spent time at Trafalgar inpatient Hospital, and sought out significant medical and psychological aid.

Furthermore, I weaned off opiates using methadone at the Ontario Addiction Treatment Centre (OATC) in North York, Toronto in 2018-2019. Here a doctor supervised and managed my methadone replacement therapy process, and I gradually eliminated all opiate use. In late 2020 at Trafalgar I underwent a detox and withdrawal from benzodiazepines which I became reliant on and chemically dependent on for anxiety and insomnia. At Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, I was treated for a combined opiate and Xanax overdose (and later, in a twisted irony, a Xanax withdrawal event leading to a seizure). I received follow up psychiatric treatment at Sunnybrook both for the overdose, the acute withdrawal, and for my physical and mental health I spent 10 days in their inpatient ward in early 2019. From 2020-2021 I was in outpatient and inpatient at Trafalgar and working with my Dr./Therapist/Psychiatrist on mental health and addictions and how to best treat my psychological illnesses in light of the concern for addictions, and address them through therapy instead of pharmaceuticals.

Afterwards starting in 2022 I was sober and managing my mental health well enough to re-enroll at Queen's. I returned to Kingston and finished my final courses in April 2022. As of now I am healthy and have all of my courses completed for my BScH degree, with my grades this past year returning to around a B+/A- average where they were before this extenuating circumstance occurred. So my transcript demonstrates how my marks returned to baseline of a 3.6/3.7 which will be sufficient for law school applications.
I am writing the LSAT in October 2022. The string of consecutive Fs from a failure to drop the courses before the deadline during my personal extenuating circumstances have lowered my GPA substantially and will likely inhibit any graduate program applications from being viewed favorably. This period where I didn't drop those courses doesn't reflect my consistent record of good grades and organization, it was a bad personal time that can be explained under the scope of these extenuating circumstances which I have fully addressed and moved forward from. I plan to graduate as soon as my transcript can be fixed to remove these grades that are there from my failure to drop on-time.

This year, I am attending a new mental health clinic for counselling, and seeing my therapist as well, to develop a regimen for LSAT studying and Law school applications. I took a LSAT course with the Princeton Review this summer. Moreover, there is documented history in my QSAS and with Student Wellness Services. I received an extension on a final essay this year in my Sleep Lab via QSAS. There should also be a record of a leave of absence and a return to studies as well which was due to these personal mental health and addictions circumstances. I will be providing relevant documentation, and am happy to supply any further documents that are necessary.

Thanks,
Samuel Goodis