Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Jessica Oppong
156 Albert Street
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 3V2
18jao1@queensu.ca

November 9, 2022

Dr. Jenn Stephenson
First Floor Dunning Hall

To Dr. Stephenson,

My name is Jessica Oppong, and I am currently in my fourth year of Philosophy. My course load consists of eight classes total for my fourth year in order to graduate on time. This semester, I am taking four philosophy courses, one of which is PHIL 405. I started the year off pretty rocky as my best friend landed in the hospital and I spent majority of my time with her. I failed to focus on anything else but her wellbeing. Once she got better a month later, I was trying to catch up on course work and with the limited knowledge I had due to my lack of success in making attendance in my classes. In PHIL 405, I completed an assignment, but the results were not great as I had no instruction for the assignment due to my lack of attendance. That led to my further lack of self-motivation. I was spending a lot more time in my room, trying to force myself to get up and start the day and very few times was I successful in this. When I was successful in getting out of bed and attempting to be productive, I spent more time on my law school applications that were due November 1st than I did on schoolwork. I was feeling extremely overwhelmed, and my mom noticed my absence in the sense that I was no speaking to her regularly like I usually do. As a nurse, she started to make connections to my mental health and came to the conclusion that I was very stressed and overwhelmed. I also informed her that I believed that my poor performance in PHIL 405 is making me lose motivation and hope for success in that class which led to further stress as I want to graduate in Spring 2023 in order to go to law school in Fall 2023. We started to think of solutions to alleviate some of the stress in my life. I realized that since I only need 6 credits in fourth year philosophy classes to graduate and I am only taking 4 classes per semester, I could pick up a different fourth year course in the winter 2023 semester and drop this class, PHIL 405, to have a lighter course load for now and prepare to reset mentally and academically for next semester. I believe that this change would better equip me for success in my studies and will also allow me to keep my plan of graduation in Spring 2023. I will have less academic stress and more time to focus on my other law school applications, giving me more freedom to focus on the five classes planned for next semester. This past week, I emailed my professor of PHIL 405 to inform him of my mental struggles more recently as he was already aware of my situation with my best friend at the beginning of the term. I also asked him if I could drop the class and he stands by my decision and will approve my request once presented to him. I have already gone ahead and added a second fourth year philosophy course to balance my academic requirements once again, still leading to my desired graduation date.

I thank you for hearing me out and I am very grateful to my professor for being so understanding of my situation throughout this semester. I also plan to get in touch with my academic advisor to ensure that I am still on route to graduate in Spring 2023 after this decision is finalized.

Best Regards,
Jessica Oppong