Petition Letter
Hi, my name is Ron Vaknin (20068990) and I am a Queen's student trying to complete my BA in Economics. I am submitting an academic appeal to late drop Econ 255 and Pols 242. The reason for my late drop is related to my Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disease that presents different symptoms for everyone. For myself it causes severe and extreme chronic fatigue on a daily basis and sporadically I go through periods of limited or next to no function of my limbs. While I do have accommodations in place, those are meant to handle my day-to-day MS symptoms (the fatigue and limited daily duration of function). However, when a full flare occurs, it is something I can't control. How the symptoms present and how long they last is out of my hands. MS diagnosis is still new to me and I am still trying to get a handle on it. This is quite hard as symptoms are not predictable or controllable. My professors have been quite accommodating and have given me extra time after the semester to complete work. Unfortunately, in that extended time period to submit the missing assignments for all my courses I caught COVID-19 (documents were submitted as academic consideration). The medication for my MS has one job, which is to suppress my immune system. This made catching Covid much worse that included medical treatment at the hospital. As such, I was only able to complete two of my four courses. While I know that I may be able to complete these missed exams with this semester's group of students, I recently entered another flare up, and currently have minimal hand function. This has forced me to drop multiple courses this current semester and has still left me very much behind on the courses I am currently enrolled in. I believe that due to the unfortunate series of health issues, I will not be able to complete the courses from the Fall 2022 semester that I am attempting to drop. I am hoping this appeal will let me drop these two courses late so I can focus on my health and this current semester, as my health has inhibited my ability to keep up with these two courses as well as many of my current courses. Thank you for your consideration