Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern.

My name is Aaron Pagulayan (20158735). I would like to request an academic appeal regarding waiving the one-term deadline and the opportunity to drop a course that passed the without academic penalty deadline. Due to an unprecedented circumstance that I have realized was much more severe than I had anticipated, I have been struggling to keep up with my studies for some time during the Fall semester of this year (2022-2023).

Throughout this semester, I have experienced instances where I have found it difficult to focus and prioritize my life, leading to missed deadlines on assignments and forgotten meetings for extracurriculars. This was all despite the use of online calendars and reminders for assignments and classes that I had organized during the first week of classes. I had previously thought it was simply my lack of proper habits or an issue of procrastination, however, I am beginning to question if it is something more psychological that has been inhibiting my ability to succeed.

This realization is that I think I may have ADHD to a degree that is to be determined. I have consulted my family on the matter and have booked an appointment with my family doctor upon my return home for the winter break to give us any guidance on how to navigate with a diagnosis on the issue of my trouble focusing and concentrating. Upon returning, I will try to determine the cause of my inhibition to focus properly since I was never diagnosed whether I had ADHD growing up nor did it ever occur to my parents if there was anything wrong with me since the concept of mental health and disorders is novel to them.

Since then, this supposed realization had negatively affected my mental health and my ability to productively attend to my coursework, leading to a depressive slippery slope that has ruined my ability to achieve academic success in some of my courses. I have tried my best to keep up with the assignments and lectures but this overwhelming amount of dread to make reparations for something I should have realized earlier in the year has taken a stressful toll on my well-being as a student.
As a result, I had decided after analyzing which courses I would still be able to succeed in that I would be unable to complete the course of CHEM 212, a necessary requirement for my degree, on a positive note. Note that I have already missed too many important deadlines including many aspects such as tutorials and quizzes for the course, along with the fact that I have failed the midterm, which is both large portions of the assessments. This appeal does not come from asking for leniency towards missing the drop course deadline; instead, I am asking for a chance to alleviate an already stressful situation on the part of my mental health of dealing with a potential undiagnosed psychological challenge affecting my academic performance.

Unfortunately, I fear that if I am unable to drop this course (CHEM 212), the repercussions of being unsuccessful due to struggling to finish the last assessments for this course will ultimately and negatively affect my performance to complete the culminating assessments/exams with a decent grade for my other classes. To further clarify, the course I am looking to drop is the CHEM 212 - Principles of Chemical Reactivity.

If the appeal is accepted, I will try my hardest next semester after meeting with a family doctor and potentially a therapist on how to deal with my issues of stress and anxiety, or other issues that have yet to be determined. I have also made an appointment with a mental health triage at the Queen??s Student Wellness Services to better address and precisely figure out what the cause of the issue is. Truly, I want to do better as a student and I believe these accommodations would be best to provide equity to a student who has yet to understand more about himself. This is my first time addressing if psychological causes are part of the reason for my diminished ability for student success.