Petition Letter
Dear Associate Deans (Studies) of Arts and Sciences,
I am writing this letter to appeal to retroactively drop the winter term of the 2017-2018 school year. The circumstances that I feel warrant this appeal are my mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and my ADHD.
With the transition in to second year, my anxiety and depression started to flare up and worsen. When I moved out of residence, I lost out on many support systems and friends that I had in first year that helped me to stay on the right course. This cause a series of depression and anxiety cycles that fed off of each other. After failing a course last term, I started to second guess my academic abilities. I fell behind early in the winter term and the cycle got worse. At the height of my cycles I would be unable to leave the security of my room for days, often times sleeping for over 15 hours. This made me miss lectures, tutorials, and assignments. With out the systems I had put in place in first year, I started spiraling and I did not reach out for assistance. When the deadline date to drop classes approached I thought that I could remedy my situation and plow through. However My situation worsened and my anxieties took hold of my actions. After the deadline date passed I realized I could not get my self out of this hole I had dug and I panicked.
In order to fix this I have begun counseling through the student wellness center. This therapy will help me develop better coping mechanisms to handle my depression and anxieties. I would be seeing a counselor on a regular basis in order to check in so I can mitigate events like this and decrease the chances of this happening again. I would also be utilizing the QSAS resources on a more frequent basis in order to set my self up with tools to bring my GPA up and stay on a solid academic road. I will also be consulting a physician to figure out a better system to treat my ADHD to see if my medication is the right choice or if there are other medications I can try. I will also be making lifestyle changes in order to start living in a healthier way. This would be something that would be talked about with a counselor and would be adjusted on a monthly basis in order to help regulate my mood in a more full sense.
I hope this letter has shed some light in to the issues I have faced this year and I hope that I can return to Queens come September.
Sincerely,
Robert Graham Davis
I am writing this letter to appeal to retroactively drop the winter term of the 2017-2018 school year. The circumstances that I feel warrant this appeal are my mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and my ADHD.
With the transition in to second year, my anxiety and depression started to flare up and worsen. When I moved out of residence, I lost out on many support systems and friends that I had in first year that helped me to stay on the right course. This cause a series of depression and anxiety cycles that fed off of each other. After failing a course last term, I started to second guess my academic abilities. I fell behind early in the winter term and the cycle got worse. At the height of my cycles I would be unable to leave the security of my room for days, often times sleeping for over 15 hours. This made me miss lectures, tutorials, and assignments. With out the systems I had put in place in first year, I started spiraling and I did not reach out for assistance. When the deadline date to drop classes approached I thought that I could remedy my situation and plow through. However My situation worsened and my anxieties took hold of my actions. After the deadline date passed I realized I could not get my self out of this hole I had dug and I panicked.
In order to fix this I have begun counseling through the student wellness center. This therapy will help me develop better coping mechanisms to handle my depression and anxieties. I would be seeing a counselor on a regular basis in order to check in so I can mitigate events like this and decrease the chances of this happening again. I would also be utilizing the QSAS resources on a more frequent basis in order to set my self up with tools to bring my GPA up and stay on a solid academic road. I will also be consulting a physician to figure out a better system to treat my ADHD to see if my medication is the right choice or if there are other medications I can try. I will also be making lifestyle changes in order to start living in a healthier way. This would be something that would be talked about with a counselor and would be adjusted on a monthly basis in order to help regulate my mood in a more full sense.
I hope this letter has shed some light in to the issues I have faced this year and I hope that I can return to Queens come September.
Sincerely,
Robert Graham Davis