Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean,

I am writing today to request that the following courses, RELS163 and STATS263, be dropped from my transcript. I am currently in my second year here at Queen??s and in February of last semester, I had applied for and received the extenuating circumstances accommodations for a traumatic event, and I am now registered with QSAS and have received substantial accommodations. These accommodations have been effective in most courses, except for STATS263 and RELS163, as said traumatic event which landed me in the hospital happened just a few days before midterms in my first year, and because RELS163 was online, I would frequently miss due dates. This was not due to forgetfulness or lack of planning, but due to a lack of energy as I was working 6 days a week and at the beginning of the year, had been scammed out of 2,500 which was nearly the entirety of my savings at the time. So, in addition to working to afford rent, groceries and other life expenses, I was also unable to take any amount of time off as I was living paycheque to paycheque, meaning that a missed shift at work was not an option most of the time which resulted in prioritizing other courses as my time and energy was very limited. I also am fully self-supporting both financially and physically, which means I work 2 jobs during the school year to maintain my life in Kingston, leaving me with a lesser amount of time than the average student to focus on academics. The reason I did not apply for this sooner with the course RELS163 is because I was simply just not aware I could apply to drop a course after it has been completed, until my meeting on Monday, November 28th, 2022 with an academic advisor.

This year, with my accommodations I had thought that I would have been successful in STATS263, but after my midterm and the weekly quizzes, I realized in the first few weeks of November that no matter how much time and effort I put into this course, I was not understanding the content and as a result, it is impacting my overall wellbeing. Since the beginning of the course, I had set aside at least two days out of the week in order to just focus on STATS263, and made my absolute best effort to improve my grade. However, after meeting with an academic advisor, communicating back and forth with Barbara Lohan who is the sexual assault and domestic violence counsellor at Queen??s, and my psychiatrist who has been seeing me on a regular basis since the incident that took place in February, we have decided that STATS263 is significantly negatively effecting my mental health, causing an increase in overall anxiety and PTSD induced panic attacks. As a result of this behavioral shift, I have had to increase my medication, have been oversleeping because of this, and often find that receiving marks or leaving a STATS263 lecture without understanding it will frequently push me into a depressive episode as in addition to three separate instances of PTSD, I struggle with BPD and bipolar two, and it is beyond frustrating as I have done everything in my control to try and improve, but have seen no positive results.

I first began to notice the pattern of this course and the relation it has to my behavior around the first week of November, but had ultimately decided that with a tutor and with my academic considerations, I would be able to successfully complete the course. However, as finals are approaching and as my personal life has become increasingly more stressful due to financial struggles and other unfortunate personal issues, I have realized that the stresses of STATS263 are making it nearly impossible to progress at all in other aspects of my life. I had even spiraled so far after a recent episode that I had driven 6 hours to Windsor impulsively, and stopped taking my medication for three weeks which is extremely dangerous considering the severity of my illnesses. If I were able to drop STATS263, it would mean I would begin to excel again in my other courses, I would have a large decrease in panic attacks, I would begin to take care of my mental health again, and my overall mood would not be influenced by a weekly quiz.

The reason this happens only with STATS 263 and not my other courses is due to an event which caused the diagnosis of my second instance of PTSD, which happened in the tenth grade. Although not occurring during my time at Queen??s, this traumatic event happened less than a few hours before that year's math exam, and this has been my first math course since then, other than eleventh grade math which was solely online and therefore significantly easier but even then was still my weakest grade in all of high school. Prior to this event, I was strong in all subjects especially in math, but after various psychologist and psychiatrist appointments since, I found that this specific event caused extreme dissociation which obviously made it very difficult to retain or recall any information from my memory. Additionally, it was after this event that I began having to financially support myself which then made it extremely difficult to thrive academically, especially in mathematics. Eventually through therapy, medication, and frequent journalling I was able to get it under control and regain some of my cognitive abilities in subjects like English, but because the particular event which triggered all of this occurred just before an already stressful math exam, it is now nearly impossible for me to attempt courses like STATS263 without being reminded of my traumatizing experiences. Which is why I am asking to drop the course before the final exam, as it is not just exams and tests that increase my anxiety levels, but in studying or even attending lectures where I find myself having to take my anti-anxiety medication as a last resort. This reaction to the course was unexpected for me, as I never would have taken the course if I knew that it would impact my wellbeing like this. However since I did, I am hoping you can understand the drastic effects that this course has had on me, and can see why I must stop focusing on it in order to return back to the stable state I was in during September and October.