Petition Letter
The Request:
The purpose of this academic petition is to request CR credits for the following courses; BCHM 218, CHEM212, and BIOL243 in the 2022 fall term, and CHEM222, CHEM 223, MICR270, and PHGY216 in the 2023 winter term. This is due to the fact that the grades achieved in these 7 courses are far below my expectations, and I believe the reason for my poor performance is due to extenuating mental health circumstances.
Why Did I Not Drop These Courses:
While the poor grades could have been avoided by dropping the courses, for several reasons, that was not something I could have done at the time. Firstly, although receiving poor grades did impact my self-worth, being enrolled in my classes forced me to have some structure in my life. Classes such as the mandatory chemistry labs forced me out of the house, and ultimately acted as a net positive, as they required me to display some sort of responsibility regardless of how difficult it felt. Secondly, at the time I did not realize how poorly I was doing in the courses until receiving midterm grades. Once I had realized how poorly I was performing in the courses, it was often past the ‘drop by’ date, and dropping the class would have no longer been an option. The final reason why I did not drop any of these courses was familial pressure. I was not mentally well enough or strong enough at the time to explain to my mom that I was doing so poorly in school. Due to my depression and mental health struggles, I did not have the strength to tell her that I would be dropping 7 out of my 10 second-year courses. The poor grades already impacted my self-esteem, and I would have felt like a complete failure if I dropped 70% of my second-year courses, and this would have led to even more worsening of my mental health.
Why Did I Not Petition Earlier:
During the time that I was taking these courses, I was not aware of academic petitions, and nor would I have had the resolve to submit one. During my second year, I could hardly manage to attend class due to my ‘Major Depression’, and anything outside of the bare minimum responsibilities seemed as if it would have been impossible. Furthermore, I did not even know about the potential to petition for CR credits until I had asked academic advisors at Queen’s if there was anything I could do to help minimize the impact of my second year. After learning of the petitions in the winter 2024 term, I was informed that I would likely need to provide the physician note form, and to obtain this form, I would have needed to be in Toronto. As soon as the winter semester ended, I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment with him. This appointment was for May 8, 2024, and I did all I could to prepare the form in advance. In short, I did not submit the petition sooner as I did not have the mental fortitude to do so at the time, I did not know petitioning existed as a possibility, and I needed to be in Toronto to obtain the physician note form. Despite not being within 1 year of the courses, I have written the petition and obtained the physician note form as soon as I possibly could.
My Extenuating Circumstances:
To explain the circumstances that impacted my academic performance during my second year of university, I first must give some background information with respect to my mental health. As a young child, my parents divorced, and each my mother and father had joint 50/50 custody of me. During the time when I was still living with my father, he became abusive, and this occurred as early as I can remember until I ran away from his house at 15 years old. This is what led to the decline of my mental health. From the ages 10 to 15 I had severe struggles with depression, attempting to take my own life on a few separate occasions, but luckily, after my mother had taken me to the emergency ward of Sunnybrook Hospital I was connected with a therapist who completely changed my outlook on life.
Despite still having my struggles with mental illness, my life was far better, my academic performance improved and I had an amazing few years. This was through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I unfortunately lost my grandfather to the virus, and due to my nonexistent relationship with my father, I was not invited to my grandfather's funeral. This was my first experience with death, and despite taking its toll on me mentally I was able to recover.
This leads me to June of 2022, which was the start of my emotional and mental decline. By this point, I had come to terms with being unable to see my dying grandfather due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I started to be able to accept death. I even started volunteering at Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital to help those during the most stressful moments of their lives. Shortly after starting to volunteer, unexpectedly, my family and I found out that my childhood dog Harley had an invasive form of cancer, and with no warning, we had to put him down that day.
This led to a spiraling of my mental health, and completely ruined me. When I had just accepted the death of my grandfather, and forgiven myself for not being at his funeral, my dog died, and as grieving is not a linear process, I had to begin my journey to accept death once again. This crippled me mentally, I could no longer get out of bed, eat or do anything I had found fun. I had to quit my summer job, and stop volunteering, as life at that moment felt impossible.
After weeks of being unable to function, the re-introduction of death in my life, and slipping into the old depressive mindset I had when I was a child, my mother took me to the doctor for help. During that first doctor's appointment, I was diagnosed with ‘Major Depression’ on July 14th, 2022. With this, I was prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant, and with each following appointment, my doctor increased the dosage. Eventually nearing the end of the summer, my doctor referred me to a team of psychiatrists at Sunnybrook Hospital.
These psychiatrists had biweekly appointments with me throughout the beginning of the school year, where they recommended other medications to me, but that was beyond my comfort level. Eventually, school ramped up, and I had class during my psychiatrist appointments, and my depression continued to worsen. Throughout the year, I felt increasingly isolated and became increasingly depressed. This built and built until the final exams of the winter 2023 semester. I believe that my depression and poor grades were cyclic. I had never in my life gotten Cs in biochemistry-related courses, and receiving these grades lowered my self-worth, and this lower self-worth made me even more depressed, making schoolwork even more difficult. My poor self-worth combined with my depression made school feel like an impossible task, and by the end of the year, for the first time in my life, my semester GPA was below 2.0.
I believe that by looking at my transcript, you will see that these ‘C’ grades are very out of character for me, as in my first year, my only poor grades were in math and physics, and in my third year I had done consistently well throughout all my courses. My second year at Queen’s University was when I was academically at my worst, and I wholeheartedly believe this is due to my severe issues with depression and mental illness during that time. My GPA in the fall semester of 2022 was 2.28, and in the winter semester of 2023 it was 1.88, this is far lower than what I have been able to achieve while mentally healthy, as this year my fall term GPA was 3.50 and my winter term GPA was 3.34. This is also echoed by the improvement of my BCHM 218 mark from a ‘C-’ to an ‘A’ upon retaking the class.
This has not been an easy petition to write as it has brought up a lot of pain from my past, but with the comparison of my academic performance between this year and last, and an explanation of my struggles with depression, I sincerely hope the credits listed above can be changed to CR credits. I am an aspiring graduate student, and having my poor mental health through my second year greatly lowering my GPA is currently a big point of stress in my life. Furthermore, The timeline of my battle with depression should be outlined in the physician note form that I have attached to this appeal.
Context Of Physician Note Form:
In the physician note form, it is specified that ‘care was provided from July 14, 2022, until April 1, 2024’. This may seem somewhat contradictory, as In the ‘Future Plan’ section, I mention that I had greatly improved over the 2023 summer. The reason why this form covers the dates July 14, 2022, until April 1, 2024, is because for me, healing and grappling with my mental trauma was a very self-directed, and variable process. Despite greatly improving over the 2023 summer, my feelings of depression were not completely gone during the early parts of this school year, but they were far more manageable. I had also not seen my doctor until I returned home to Toronto after the 2023/2024 school year, and that was when I was officially cleared of ‘Major Depression’ by my doctor.
The purpose of this academic petition is to request CR credits for the following courses; BCHM 218, CHEM212, and BIOL243 in the 2022 fall term, and CHEM222, CHEM 223, MICR270, and PHGY216 in the 2023 winter term. This is due to the fact that the grades achieved in these 7 courses are far below my expectations, and I believe the reason for my poor performance is due to extenuating mental health circumstances.
Why Did I Not Drop These Courses:
While the poor grades could have been avoided by dropping the courses, for several reasons, that was not something I could have done at the time. Firstly, although receiving poor grades did impact my self-worth, being enrolled in my classes forced me to have some structure in my life. Classes such as the mandatory chemistry labs forced me out of the house, and ultimately acted as a net positive, as they required me to display some sort of responsibility regardless of how difficult it felt. Secondly, at the time I did not realize how poorly I was doing in the courses until receiving midterm grades. Once I had realized how poorly I was performing in the courses, it was often past the ‘drop by’ date, and dropping the class would have no longer been an option. The final reason why I did not drop any of these courses was familial pressure. I was not mentally well enough or strong enough at the time to explain to my mom that I was doing so poorly in school. Due to my depression and mental health struggles, I did not have the strength to tell her that I would be dropping 7 out of my 10 second-year courses. The poor grades already impacted my self-esteem, and I would have felt like a complete failure if I dropped 70% of my second-year courses, and this would have led to even more worsening of my mental health.
Why Did I Not Petition Earlier:
During the time that I was taking these courses, I was not aware of academic petitions, and nor would I have had the resolve to submit one. During my second year, I could hardly manage to attend class due to my ‘Major Depression’, and anything outside of the bare minimum responsibilities seemed as if it would have been impossible. Furthermore, I did not even know about the potential to petition for CR credits until I had asked academic advisors at Queen’s if there was anything I could do to help minimize the impact of my second year. After learning of the petitions in the winter 2024 term, I was informed that I would likely need to provide the physician note form, and to obtain this form, I would have needed to be in Toronto. As soon as the winter semester ended, I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment with him. This appointment was for May 8, 2024, and I did all I could to prepare the form in advance. In short, I did not submit the petition sooner as I did not have the mental fortitude to do so at the time, I did not know petitioning existed as a possibility, and I needed to be in Toronto to obtain the physician note form. Despite not being within 1 year of the courses, I have written the petition and obtained the physician note form as soon as I possibly could.
My Extenuating Circumstances:
To explain the circumstances that impacted my academic performance during my second year of university, I first must give some background information with respect to my mental health. As a young child, my parents divorced, and each my mother and father had joint 50/50 custody of me. During the time when I was still living with my father, he became abusive, and this occurred as early as I can remember until I ran away from his house at 15 years old. This is what led to the decline of my mental health. From the ages 10 to 15 I had severe struggles with depression, attempting to take my own life on a few separate occasions, but luckily, after my mother had taken me to the emergency ward of Sunnybrook Hospital I was connected with a therapist who completely changed my outlook on life.
Despite still having my struggles with mental illness, my life was far better, my academic performance improved and I had an amazing few years. This was through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I unfortunately lost my grandfather to the virus, and due to my nonexistent relationship with my father, I was not invited to my grandfather's funeral. This was my first experience with death, and despite taking its toll on me mentally I was able to recover.
This leads me to June of 2022, which was the start of my emotional and mental decline. By this point, I had come to terms with being unable to see my dying grandfather due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I started to be able to accept death. I even started volunteering at Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital to help those during the most stressful moments of their lives. Shortly after starting to volunteer, unexpectedly, my family and I found out that my childhood dog Harley had an invasive form of cancer, and with no warning, we had to put him down that day.
This led to a spiraling of my mental health, and completely ruined me. When I had just accepted the death of my grandfather, and forgiven myself for not being at his funeral, my dog died, and as grieving is not a linear process, I had to begin my journey to accept death once again. This crippled me mentally, I could no longer get out of bed, eat or do anything I had found fun. I had to quit my summer job, and stop volunteering, as life at that moment felt impossible.
After weeks of being unable to function, the re-introduction of death in my life, and slipping into the old depressive mindset I had when I was a child, my mother took me to the doctor for help. During that first doctor's appointment, I was diagnosed with ‘Major Depression’ on July 14th, 2022. With this, I was prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant, and with each following appointment, my doctor increased the dosage. Eventually nearing the end of the summer, my doctor referred me to a team of psychiatrists at Sunnybrook Hospital.
These psychiatrists had biweekly appointments with me throughout the beginning of the school year, where they recommended other medications to me, but that was beyond my comfort level. Eventually, school ramped up, and I had class during my psychiatrist appointments, and my depression continued to worsen. Throughout the year, I felt increasingly isolated and became increasingly depressed. This built and built until the final exams of the winter 2023 semester. I believe that my depression and poor grades were cyclic. I had never in my life gotten Cs in biochemistry-related courses, and receiving these grades lowered my self-worth, and this lower self-worth made me even more depressed, making schoolwork even more difficult. My poor self-worth combined with my depression made school feel like an impossible task, and by the end of the year, for the first time in my life, my semester GPA was below 2.0.
I believe that by looking at my transcript, you will see that these ‘C’ grades are very out of character for me, as in my first year, my only poor grades were in math and physics, and in my third year I had done consistently well throughout all my courses. My second year at Queen’s University was when I was academically at my worst, and I wholeheartedly believe this is due to my severe issues with depression and mental illness during that time. My GPA in the fall semester of 2022 was 2.28, and in the winter semester of 2023 it was 1.88, this is far lower than what I have been able to achieve while mentally healthy, as this year my fall term GPA was 3.50 and my winter term GPA was 3.34. This is also echoed by the improvement of my BCHM 218 mark from a ‘C-’ to an ‘A’ upon retaking the class.
This has not been an easy petition to write as it has brought up a lot of pain from my past, but with the comparison of my academic performance between this year and last, and an explanation of my struggles with depression, I sincerely hope the credits listed above can be changed to CR credits. I am an aspiring graduate student, and having my poor mental health through my second year greatly lowering my GPA is currently a big point of stress in my life. Furthermore, The timeline of my battle with depression should be outlined in the physician note form that I have attached to this appeal.
Context Of Physician Note Form:
In the physician note form, it is specified that ‘care was provided from July 14, 2022, until April 1, 2024’. This may seem somewhat contradictory, as In the ‘Future Plan’ section, I mention that I had greatly improved over the 2023 summer. The reason why this form covers the dates July 14, 2022, until April 1, 2024, is because for me, healing and grappling with my mental trauma was a very self-directed, and variable process. Despite greatly improving over the 2023 summer, my feelings of depression were not completely gone during the early parts of this school year, but they were far more manageable. I had also not seen my doctor until I returned home to Toronto after the 2023/2024 school year, and that was when I was officially cleared of ‘Major Depression’ by my doctor.