Petition Letter
In the fall semester of 2022, I had experienced a sexual assault at Queen's University. Evidently, this was a difficult time and lead to intense feelings of depression, anxiety and paranoia. This lead to a lot of difficulty concentrating and doing any schoolwork which took a toll on my academic progress. I had reached out to Barb Lotan who was great help, and was directed to a counsellor at KGH specialized in sexual assault cases. After my referral, I was having therapy sessions with said counsellor biweekly for around 9 months. As our session progressed, I had taken on strategies to manage my feelings and learn how to move on after the incident. After a while I decided I wanted to try navigating on my own and was no longer attending therapy for the assault.
At first, I seemed to be doing good and was catching up academically and had started to feel overall better. After some time, specially during my forth year in the winter semester, I had started to feel symptoms of depression and anxiety coming on. As the semester progressed, the feelings started getting worse and I felt completely isolated from my housemates, my friends and my academics. I found getting motivated to do anything quite hard and I was falling behind in school. After a while I had the courage to go to student counselling to get a new therapist and try to grow from this situation. However, both my therapist and I decided it be better I go home for the remaining few weeks of my last winter semester. Being back at home with my family was a great help and I continued those sessions online.
Unfortunately there were some exams I was unable to complete and there was a long process for deferred exams as I was able to write some exams but not others. These decisions also spilled into the the beginning weeks of may after the deadline to add classes to the summer semester.
At first, I seemed to be doing good and was catching up academically and had started to feel overall better. After some time, specially during my forth year in the winter semester, I had started to feel symptoms of depression and anxiety coming on. As the semester progressed, the feelings started getting worse and I felt completely isolated from my housemates, my friends and my academics. I found getting motivated to do anything quite hard and I was falling behind in school. After a while I had the courage to go to student counselling to get a new therapist and try to grow from this situation. However, both my therapist and I decided it be better I go home for the remaining few weeks of my last winter semester. Being back at home with my family was a great help and I continued those sessions online.
Unfortunately there were some exams I was unable to complete and there was a long process for deferred exams as I was able to write some exams but not others. These decisions also spilled into the the beginning weeks of may after the deadline to add classes to the summer semester.