Petition Letter
I am a recent transfer student who came to Queens from the University of Waterloo due to my circumstances at uWaterloo. I am currently a third year of university but first year at Queens studying computer science. During my 2nd year of university (fall 2020) I was living in Waterloo by myself due to me having mandatory in-person labs. Living by myself with no close friends or family nearby and in the middle of lockdown caused my mental health to deteriorate as I went on through the fall and winter semester. Eventually it got to the point where I really wanted to drop out of school due to depressing and dark thoughts. My parents convinced me to transfer to Queens since I grew up in Kingston. I had graduated from KCVI and been living in Kingston since grade 9. Once I transferred over my mental health began to heal as I was with close friends in a familiar city. However, at the end of October a friend of mine, Jack Quipp a third year at Queens, committed suicide. This caused me and many of my friends who all knew Jack to take a step back from school for a couple weeks. For me this brought me back down in my mental health. I've tried to catch back up in school work but for the past month I have been struggling to attend lectures and complete assignments so I would like to drop these two courses. My other two courses that I am taking right now are full year courses so I can try to work on improving those grades next semester after I have time to spend time with my family during the Christmas break. I am also worried about what will happen to my OSAP funding as I will then be part-time even though I was full time until this point. Due the stress from the situation and COVID cases in Kingston, I would just like to not worry about the two courses that I know I won't be doing well in. For documents, I haven't been able to book an appointment with a professional so I have linked the obituary of my friend Jack on the next page instead. I hope that is okay.