Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am petitioning to late drop and expunge from my transcripts DEVS240 and HIST270 from Fall 2022 semester. The reason I am doing so months later is because this is the only time when I have been mentally able to go through another process of advocating for myself. Fundamentally, going through the Academic Accommodations process at Queen??s when one is legitimately in a verified state of crisis worsens an already harmful and traumatic process and dramatically reduced my ability to bounce back. Your support team strongly recommended I drop courses early on because of how far behind I was and the significance of the circumstance. However, I was not able to make a sound decision as my executive function was obviously impacted. This is why I was on academic accommodations for an extenuating circumstance to begin with. I was able to only save one course out of three from Fall 2022 semester, which was ENIN200.
In my state, the accommodations process is counter intuitive to what I imagine the desired end result would be: To get the cognitive support needed for the student to manage the crisis while in a state of trauma, help the student reduce their workload while also maintaining academic integrity, and hopefully ensure the student moves into the next semester so that they can continue paying tuition and stay on their respective paths. In reality, the process has twice done exactly the opposite: It extends and deepens and complicates the state of crisis, it adds a far higher cognitive burden than managing a regular course-load would, and it can very easily permanently disrupt their academic careers and a person??s confidence. Instead of school being separate from the trauma it becomes almost tethered to it. The first time I used AA it in 2020-2021, I was out for an entire year after and still failed a course. The second time, I lost a whole semester and ended up failing all 3 courses. In both cases, I truly believe a small re-design of your system would have maintained academic momentum.
Why would I keep holding onto the idea I could keep trying to save a semester where I failed all 3 courses and it was obvious to outsiders it was near impossible to catch up? One reason is because I really didn??t want to have to appeal to drop and write all this out. Once a trauma is verified and confirmed, making the student constantly re-tell and re-live and appeal and advocate, thus putting them into a mindset of victimhood or focusing on a past negative experience makes things worse. It then becomes far less likely for the person to reach their academic goals and more likely to use up their resilience on processes that don??t serve the university or the student. One thing I do have is funds for education only, and I would have liked to continue paying tuition and figured out a way to do this without having to lose my privacy.
There is already ample documentation for the situation on file but I will again re-state it even though it causes me great emotional pain: Fall 2022 semester marked the beginning of a divorce process, a time when I finally was able to leave abuse and my 22-year marriage to a disabled (almost maximum disconnect PTSD) veteran. I requested AA for a single extenuating circumstance this time and was granted from mid October to Jan. 13th, the maximum time but still could not save the semester despite giving everything I had to try. Obviously, I was/am a strong person I was a military wife and career woman before growing caregiving demands took me out. My husband??s condition only worsened over time from combat related conditions from service in Iraq circa 2001-2004 ( PTSD, then later a major TBI in 2018 which resulted in almost losing him, then amnesia, which turned into chronic abuse, and growing episodes of psychosis and addiction because of damage to his hippocampus from combat) The whole time I have been a student at Queen??s, I??ve navigated this and truthfully since his discharge in 2004 as they get worse, not better. His conditions evolved and grew over time. They significantly impacted my safety at the exact time I was accepted into the program and came to a boiling point in Summer 2022. When I finally left for good this summer deciding my safety was more important than anything else, I was determined to finish school and start over with nothing.
Trying to figure out how to leave without a safe place to go mid-life when all my friends kids are off to university now and everyone else is thriving was really hard. I left with nothing but a small bag (June 26th, 2022), leaving all my 3 senior and much-loved cats and car and everything I owned and knew with somebody unstable but who had much more power and money than me in the USA. I found some consolation that I could always visit Carter, my family??s dog in Ottawa. Then Carter died suddenly in October. I was already grieving intensely for the loss of my marriage, dreams, and the loss of 3 pets and then it was Carter. Fall 2022 semester was relentlessly heartbreaking and still having to write about it breaks my heart again. I was trying to get used to the shock of it all, being married one day and a caregiver (a 22 year plus role) and having a beautiful home full of pets and food, to looking for roach infested apartments I could afford in Toronto all alone. I wish I just dropped all my classes immediately but I couldn??t let go of this delusion that I could make this year my comeback story. Plus family pressure because of the financial help I got to escape made me approach the semester with a degree of perfectionism that was not healthy. I go to school for Development, and I grew up with a father in international development, so this should be something I excel at regardless of what??s happening. This was not the case
I first tried last year to escape to Ottawa but I also came from a home of abuse. The pandemic only made things far worse and at my age (42) of course my parents are senior and not well either so by now I??m exhausted from caregiving. My hometown in Ottawa was no longer a safe escape route and your support department knows about this attempt in 2021. While some of my friends also in their 40s have gotten separated, they all had places to go to back home or friends to stay with, but my childhood home is not a safe place, which is why I got married at age 20 to escape it. I was privileged, but not safe. When all you know is abuse and control (I grew up diplomatically which means we didn??t have autonomy nor does the lifestyle allow the children to form social bonds and networks). Its not uncommon to end up marrying into the similar restrictive conditions to get away from it only to repeat the cycle-and all this impacts your choices. I am explaining this so you understand how a woman in trauma , returning to school in mid-life might be thinking and the unsaid motives which may be to save their own lives. I also began to see Queen??s as the only escape as abuse increased: as my way out. Its also normal for people raised diplomatically outside the cultures to not seek help because your needs and autonomy never mattered and we grew up entirely disconnected from institutional processes because we lived inside of it. I put so much pressure on myself I cracked.

The bottom line is I couldn??t drop the courses because I was lost in survival mode and under a lot of pressure mentally. I was experiencing trauma, desperate to preserve my academic career because I felt if I let go then I wouldn??t survive and might go back again which was and remains my greatest fear. Avoidance is another thing I was using-I didn??t want to have to write all this out because its emotionally grueling and I was scared to go back there mentally as I am just beginning to start to manage things as it is. Again, this is what a brain in trauma actually thinks like: in extremes like? life or death? terms. What I needed help with the most was thinking and making decisions and filling out paperwork when my brain collapsed under stress-not more tasks and more exposure and shame.
Arriving in Toronto with nothing at all with the housing crisis meant I found a place right when the semester started and separation negotiations were not good because he was very angry I left. By October 2022, the workload in courses increased. At the same time, I knew I had to give up custody and any claim to any assets for me to move forward with school and my new life. I thought I could manage this grief and loss and excel in Fall 2022 semester, graduate on time by Summer 2023 latest, and find a great internship in Summer. Things didn??t work out that way. Instead, I fell apart and isolated myself into a space where all I did was try to create perfect work convinced that this was my only way out. I spent months trying to write this letter and crying through it, praying that I could get the strength to actually submit a petition and not be exposed once again through the process.
My reason for the late drop appeal is I was not able to make the sound decision to drop the courses because of trauma and the steps involved which evoked trauma again. I was not thinking rationally, I was thinking I needed to finish as quickly as possible because this is my way out and second chance in life and would ensure my survival. However, I realized all these fails on my transcript from the worst year in my life are incredibly damaging as I try to look for opportunities to support myself. After maintaining over a 3.0 since 2019 with Queen??s, after two terrible semesters and trying to use accommodations as a lifeline have all backfired. All that work to keep my grades higher in incredibly stressful circumstances of being a veteran caregiver then a woman leaving abuse means little. Now I see that I do not qualify for any internships at any good companies. If there is no way to get these failures off my record, then there is no sense in continuing on because then Queens is no longer a viable pathway out for me to the organizations that I need to work for. Right now, I am volunteering at a non profit food justice organization and Toronto is too expensive to afford working in non-profit sector. Letting me do a late drop would make a huge difference in being financially sustainable and secure a better future.
The other reason I need a late drop are the exact same reasons I went on academic accommodations-I needed to recoup before I could write another letter or appeal sharing my most personal and private battles which I would prefer to have kept personal. I am being candid because I hope you will consider the realities and steps involved when someone like me tries to get help during a trauma state and how many times we must share deeply personal details to get help. Trying to stay atop of all the moving parts required to coordinate accommodations through the institution only worsened my state through the process. Each step I lost a little more dignity. Ultimately your process entails adding extra work during a time when I could not accept additional cognitive burden. Each time a student goes through accommodations and they have to go through the multiple bureaucracies of your system to get an extension, it requires extensive and intense coordinating , submitting paperwork over and over again, and making up dates I cannot meet and don??t have the sense to realize I cannot meet, then managing the adjusted schedules and timelines of professors, TA??s and myself. Ultimately efforts can all be futile if the professors don??t have to accommodate anyway. Trauma impacts your communication and your process demands more advanced communication. A.A. requires dealing with more people than normal and being totally vulnerable and exposed. Whoever designed the process certainly did not test it under one off major life event like divorce and leaving abuse.
One of the stipulations of being on academic accommodations is any and all terms and conditions are left to the discretion of the professor. For HIST270, this rule meant I was always going to fail anyway as the workload was realistically too great to catch up on without more flexibility (meaning a reduction) on what was already the heaviest workload of any course taken in my academic career. Access to all weekly quizzes worth 30% of my grade were blocked after December (even though accommodations were granted until Jan 13) and the weighting was heavy enough that it then out pressure on me to get A+ on the remaining 2 essays due to barely pass the course. I wrote the exam as scheduled and excelled so I know I know the content. (Plus my father is one of Canada??s top China relations experts so I literally grew up with this content, adding more psychological pressure to succeed.) I spent 7 days a week every single day making up for 8 weeks lost and writing essays for every week missed and excelled in the exam. (Most of the semester was missed so this was a massive catch up.) There was no big flexibility outside of letting me propose dates I could not meet. I finally crumbled under the pressure because I was already in trauma and exhausted. My accommodations were until Jan. 13 but nothing on ??On Q? tests were adjusted to support me-for example all quizzes were closed in December, and so there was no way for me to possibly succeed with automatic zeros for 7-10 quizzes worth so much. I was ashamed and exhausted from reaching out to make new dates and not being able to meet them and also confused about how to get out of the maze and deeply ashamed. So, I didn??t ask about the quizzes and why he would close them all making it pointless for me to try because I already felt extremely ashamed I needed help at all. Plus I knew to make up for all those zeros I would have to get an A+ on the remaining 2 essays due.

ENIN200 was a course I was able to save which makes sense because my entire 12 +year career prior to caregiving was creating new products to launch so I could do this with my eyes closed and hands tied. I was able to save it because half of the content was familiar to me, and I love innovation and it??s a fantastic course. However again, your policy says accommodations are up to the professor. This should have been an easy A+ for me having launched endless products. So, when I asked the T.A. to re-do an assignment I got a 36% on that fell within the window of my accommodations back in December because of the approved A.A., I was told flat out ??no.? This is within the rules as its up to professor??s discretion. So, this led to me spending weeks trying to do a perfect project because I had to get a perfect score on the final assignment to pass the course to make up for the 36% worth half my grade that I was not permitted to redo. This took time away from DEVS240 because professor discretion had a domino effect. I got an A on the final project and so my grade was changed to a B-.
DEVS240 is the one course that is the most important-I was 90% complete with the course and simply needed to hand in the final case study and infographic. However, I used up the rest of my mental and emotional and cognitive resources between my personal crisis and navigating the rules of your system, trying to get perfect on the ENIN200 project to make up for the fact they chose not to honor my accommodations, trying to get perfect marks for HIST270 to make up for 7-8 automatic zeroes for quizzes I inexplicably couldn??t take because they were set to close before my accommodations window was even over, and between all that and a million moving parts, I had nothing left to give. For months I tried to finish the case study to no avail because I was so depleted. Even then, 2 weeks ago I had to fight again for the grade change which was never done for ENIN200.
When someone is in a temporary life crisis, lessening the burden while that person recovers helps. Queen??s system adds more burdens and more work and more follow up and a heavier cognitive load than just catching up with schoolwork. It also requires the student to re-live and re-experience whatever crisis or trauma took them out as they continue to advocate for a situation in which ample therapy and consults have already supplied documentation for without a good reason to do so. Each time I lost my privacy and self esteem having to talk to new people about it. I lost face, which is a huge thing being half Asian and I wanted to disappear because the process is so intrusive.
My Fall 2022 accommodations ended Jan 2022. It??s now May 2023 and I am now writing to appeal to late drop two courses marked as fail on my transcript. Writing this letter is excruciating and evokes shame and humiliation I would prefer to move past, especially since the situation I was in , as a woman escaping domestic abuse and a 22 year marriage. All the challenges associated with leaving and using education as my escape route out of abuse has been well documented by your teams since 2021. I am appealing for my life essentially. Each time I have to go through your accommodation system I am left more depleted than when I began. I have to take a semester off because its so depleting and dehumanizing. It would be great to be able to use this degree as a pathway out. I cannot do this with 2 failures on my record as all internships require a minimum of 3.0 to be considered. Your support team offered to help me withdraw in November but unsurprisingly I was not able to make sound decisions at that time. If I had been, I wouldn??t have been on academic accommodations in the first place and I hope I can get this off my record and you can see how much I tried.

Fundamentally, the accommodations system is not designed around existing research and science so after half a year of rest, I can come back and advocate for myself properly. Last time your process took me out for an entire year and it is my hope that Queen??s reconsiders the design of the system for people in genuine crisis. If someone is truly experiencing trauma that impacts executive function and all aspects of one??s life, then ADDING more tasks that require even more coordination and more executive functioning does not make logical sense. Going on accommodations adds a significant administrative and organizational burden and only adds additional barriers to someone experiencing real trauma.

Sincerely,
Lindsay Marie MacIntosh (20083029) formerly Lindsay Marie Webster.