Manage Appeals
Petition Type: New
ID: 10849
Submitted: August 11, 2023 at 2:45:02 PM
First Name: Jiayi
Last Name: Kang
Pronoun: She
Student Number: 20078138
Email: 17jk8@queensu.ca
Degree Program: BAH
Plan: MATH
Level of Study: 2
Petition Categories
Petition Categories: Waive the 21-day or one term deadline
Petition Letter
Petition Letter: Petition Container An Academic Plan
-Academic petition to waive the deadline for submitting a petition
-Petition to waive the requirement to withdraw
-Petition to drop courses late (ARTH 120, ECON 110, PSYCH 100, MATH 110 from 2022 fall to 2023 winter, COMM 211 in 2021 fall and PSYCH 100 in 2021 summer)
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing this petition to waive the deadline for submitting a petition, the requirement to withdraw and drop the courses late. I am aware that I did not submit it in time, so I would like to apologize for that first. I would like to explain why here. I was not attempting to waste resources or time on purpose, but I was struggling over the past 2 years because of my mental health and family problems, especially in the last year when I was struggling to survive. They both had a great effect on my mind and daily functioning. I couldn’t maintain a normal, healthy routine, like eating and sleeping. There were many days in the past 2 years when I did not eat all day until the night came and I got exhausted that I had to fall asleep. And sometimes I had to ask others, like one of my friends, to order my food or cook together to help force myself to eat at least to maintain the body’s functioning. My quality of sleep has steadily decreased over the past two years and reached its worst point from October or November 2022 to June 2023, when I either stayed up all night because of anxiety or almost slept over the whole day because I was very low and tired. As a result, sometimes I had to take painkillers to ease physical pain like headache, and I lost more than 17 pounds from December 2022 to the January 2023, without intentionally losing weight. I was always too afraid and intense to go to public areas, like campus, classrooms and even the kitchen of the house I rent. Going and staying in a crowded room was hard for me. It brought so much stress that I could not concentrate on what I was doing, or what I should be doing, like listening to the lecture. At some extreme times, I could hardly help but shed tears when I was in such a situation alone. I was not able to build new relationships or maintain old relationships because of my fear and worries of social connection. Those conversations and chats got away from my life as well. It was even tough to imagine the occasions where I had to speak to my peer, tutors and even professors for me during the last 2 years. Those were some of the reasons of the academic backwardness, the absence of classes, tests and even final exams at the same time, and eventually the failure. All of these were progressively worse and deeper until the worst period. I started rarely attended academic activities since 2021. When it came to the past academic year, except for attending few lectures at the very beginning, last September and the early parts of last October, I never attended any real class or exam, which means I did not participate in the academic program even though I enrolled.
Under the strong and bad influence that depression and anxiety had on me, I did not tell or realize the truth during the period when I always perceived things in very subjective and narrow ways. Along with the family problems, the lack of acceptance, trust, understanding ,and communication, I endured several failures and disappointments from myself and my family, so I did not believe anyone could accept, support, or help me, but believed neither of them was reliable. And finally I made mistakes like lying and pretending. While I realized the truth would never be made up as I cheated and pretended, much more stress and pain got over me, and I got lost in my life and made more bad decisions, like never seeking help or giving it a try to follow the good routine. I lost my judgment and hope, and just let myself be isolated and evasive. In the last academic year, I completely fell into all sorts of issues without mental space for my academy and future, and even believed death and destruction would be the only results for me. I was not able to focus on or consider setting an accessible plan, how to make the right decisions, or catch important information like the deadline. It just turned into a change until this summer. I took a step and met a new counselor, then an academic advisor, and finally confessed everything to my family and talked to them to reach an agreement to make things better.
To help myself achieve success, in the past few weeks I have been doing introspection, exploring myself, communicating, and thinking about adjustments and plans for the future, including both in terms of living and the academy, because we believe they do really matter equally and interact with each other in my case. I made an academic plan as the advisor suggested. Here is my academic plan below.
First of all, I would like to change to a more proper program—Liberal Studies (General). About academic demands, Mathematics and Statistics were my previous programs, whose courses are generally more difficult. That requires that I follow every link well, attend each lecture in person, stay highly focused in those courses, and spend much time. It was very hard for me to follow and attend classes willingly when I was falling into those negative emotions and thoughts. While I do realize depression causes inevitable damage to patients' brain functions like memory and attention. As the years have gone by, my mind is not as agile and sharp as it used to be. The same program would be much more challenging than earlier years, both in terms of mental health and difficulty. When it comes to Liberal Studies -General, some courses I already passed in Math, writing, and economics could likely satisfy the option courses in Liberal Studies (General). And ARTH 120, a course that is not that tough but I gave up and failed, is on the list of Liberal Studies (General) in the option part as well, which means I could retake it in the upcoming year to improve my GPA and make progress toward the degree of Liberal Studies (General) at the same time. But for PSCHO 100, which I failed too, I am not going to retake it, at least not this upcoming year. Because it is challenging with plenty of text and mandatory group labs for me, and I know it will stress me out. To make sure I keep following courses, I plan to join a study group online or in person and take advantage of what the university provides, like asking the TAs. After seeing the tough situation and many difficulties I am facing and will need to handle, I would like to go for a General Degree instead of an honors degree. That would reach simpler levels and lighten the course load. I would also like to spread courses over the whole year, including the summer term, which would let me stay on track with a fulfilling schedule to improve and make progress every day and avoid falling into emotional traps. It can shorten the length of time and allow me to have a lighter course load in the fall and spring terms. So I can do my best to make sure the new goal is available, accessible, and realistic.
Considering the interest, I also realize I never really liked or was interested in Mathematics and Statistics, so it has always been a heavy, repeating dual task on my shoulder to satisfy others, which brought extra stress and burden along the way. I have seen how interests have a significant positive effect on helping people be themselves and reach their goals through my friends' experiences, and I recognize it for now. So based on the suggestions and introductions from the academic advisor, school website, and agency, I am willing to change to Liberal Studies-General, which offers a wild range of courses and many opportunities to explore myself, variable fields, humanity, and the world. It is flexible. In terms of difficulty, depth, and fields, which allows me to choose and immerse myself in what I really want to learn, like history, language, religion, and biology, and adjust according to my abilities and interests. I am also strongly attracted to the idea that by finishing the plan, students could develop critical thinking, analytical, writing, and oral communication skills. Those skills and advantages are what I am really interested in and enjoy. And they would definitely help me build confidence and step out of my closed mind, which are important to conquering my mental health problems and helping establish a good foundation for the future and my whole life.
I did tend to miss classes, avoid my readings and assignments, and fall behind on my coursework. After talking to the counselor and my family for recent weeks, I realized what I believed became barriers that stopped me to implement actions. They were fakes or just my imaginations but caused much stress and anxiety. So I have been adapting and will be working on it by opening my mind to external world. I have also created a light-loaded schedule for recent weeks that includes a study section and followed it to practice and get prepared. I already told my family the true situation I was in to let them acknowledge the reality and break down some impediments together. There won't be any bubbles of lies and imagination between me and my family from now on, which will allow me to do as we plan without other redundant concerns. Being honest to my family and solving problems together are what I will keep doing in the future to reduce my emotional burden and avoidance tendency. In addition to overcoming the low energy and bad emotions of depression, I am already on a wait list for medicine prescriptions. I've never tried medicine before, so it would be a new method and provide at least some relief from bad emotions. I would keep going and explore more with the counselor at the university once a week since I found the emotional support and objective opinions necessary and basic to expand my cognition, motivate me, inspire me, and even pull me back on the right path. Besides, I will keep seeking various methods to help combat depression and reduce its effect on me. My parents and I have reached an agreement on the future plan. They also made an appointment with another native counselor to help our relationship and solve the problem together. To directly and truly ensure I won't miss classes, assignments, or examinations, my mother will come to accompany me in the coming academic year if the petition is approved. I am going to set a healthy and reasonable daily schedule according to the academic support resources. With special deadlines and reward rules marked on the schedule, it would make a difference step by step, building new beneficial habits from behavior to mental response. If there is spare time, I would also like to join the English Conversation Circle that is hosted by Student Academic Success Services and QUIC every week. The goals of such group work are to help students build their own confidence, feel connected with peers and the community together, stay in touch, and promote motivation and interests by talking about their daily lives and sharing their ideas in classes. It is not an academic-focused club, but it still helps students in their studies. To keep myself on track, fight against depression, and achieve success, those goals and such an atmosphere are helpful and important to me. It would help me be socially connected to live well and participate in my academic program. It is a good chance and bridge to help me know myself, manage my depression, and engage me well since I was always limited by my narrow perception. I believe it will play an important role in engaging me in school life.
I chose a General Degree with consideration of financial factors as well. We have wasted much time and money on past mistakes, and a General Degree requires 30 units less and lower-level courses. It is still within our reach. Overall, Liberal Studies-General is affordable, with less risk and more potential and interests to facilitate my academic success.
In my case, with such a history of depression and anxiety , in spite of using as many resources as possible, it will still require me to force myself and pay much more effort to fight with myself. This is an inevitable process to go through, no matter the success of my academy career or my entire life. I acknowledged it and decided to make a change and take responsibility for myself instead of giving in and avoiding. Therefore, I am writing this petition sincerely and hope it can be approved. I would truly appreciate your approval of my petition.
Thank you for your reading and consideration.
Best Regards,
20078138
Jiayi Kang
-Academic petition to waive the deadline for submitting a petition
-Petition to waive the requirement to withdraw
-Petition to drop courses late (ARTH 120, ECON 110, PSYCH 100, MATH 110 from 2022 fall to 2023 winter, COMM 211 in 2021 fall and PSYCH 100 in 2021 summer)
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing this petition to waive the deadline for submitting a petition, the requirement to withdraw and drop the courses late. I am aware that I did not submit it in time, so I would like to apologize for that first. I would like to explain why here. I was not attempting to waste resources or time on purpose, but I was struggling over the past 2 years because of my mental health and family problems, especially in the last year when I was struggling to survive. They both had a great effect on my mind and daily functioning. I couldn’t maintain a normal, healthy routine, like eating and sleeping. There were many days in the past 2 years when I did not eat all day until the night came and I got exhausted that I had to fall asleep. And sometimes I had to ask others, like one of my friends, to order my food or cook together to help force myself to eat at least to maintain the body’s functioning. My quality of sleep has steadily decreased over the past two years and reached its worst point from October or November 2022 to June 2023, when I either stayed up all night because of anxiety or almost slept over the whole day because I was very low and tired. As a result, sometimes I had to take painkillers to ease physical pain like headache, and I lost more than 17 pounds from December 2022 to the January 2023, without intentionally losing weight. I was always too afraid and intense to go to public areas, like campus, classrooms and even the kitchen of the house I rent. Going and staying in a crowded room was hard for me. It brought so much stress that I could not concentrate on what I was doing, or what I should be doing, like listening to the lecture. At some extreme times, I could hardly help but shed tears when I was in such a situation alone. I was not able to build new relationships or maintain old relationships because of my fear and worries of social connection. Those conversations and chats got away from my life as well. It was even tough to imagine the occasions where I had to speak to my peer, tutors and even professors for me during the last 2 years. Those were some of the reasons of the academic backwardness, the absence of classes, tests and even final exams at the same time, and eventually the failure. All of these were progressively worse and deeper until the worst period. I started rarely attended academic activities since 2021. When it came to the past academic year, except for attending few lectures at the very beginning, last September and the early parts of last October, I never attended any real class or exam, which means I did not participate in the academic program even though I enrolled.
Under the strong and bad influence that depression and anxiety had on me, I did not tell or realize the truth during the period when I always perceived things in very subjective and narrow ways. Along with the family problems, the lack of acceptance, trust, understanding ,and communication, I endured several failures and disappointments from myself and my family, so I did not believe anyone could accept, support, or help me, but believed neither of them was reliable. And finally I made mistakes like lying and pretending. While I realized the truth would never be made up as I cheated and pretended, much more stress and pain got over me, and I got lost in my life and made more bad decisions, like never seeking help or giving it a try to follow the good routine. I lost my judgment and hope, and just let myself be isolated and evasive. In the last academic year, I completely fell into all sorts of issues without mental space for my academy and future, and even believed death and destruction would be the only results for me. I was not able to focus on or consider setting an accessible plan, how to make the right decisions, or catch important information like the deadline. It just turned into a change until this summer. I took a step and met a new counselor, then an academic advisor, and finally confessed everything to my family and talked to them to reach an agreement to make things better.
To help myself achieve success, in the past few weeks I have been doing introspection, exploring myself, communicating, and thinking about adjustments and plans for the future, including both in terms of living and the academy, because we believe they do really matter equally and interact with each other in my case. I made an academic plan as the advisor suggested. Here is my academic plan below.
First of all, I would like to change to a more proper program—Liberal Studies (General). About academic demands, Mathematics and Statistics were my previous programs, whose courses are generally more difficult. That requires that I follow every link well, attend each lecture in person, stay highly focused in those courses, and spend much time. It was very hard for me to follow and attend classes willingly when I was falling into those negative emotions and thoughts. While I do realize depression causes inevitable damage to patients' brain functions like memory and attention. As the years have gone by, my mind is not as agile and sharp as it used to be. The same program would be much more challenging than earlier years, both in terms of mental health and difficulty. When it comes to Liberal Studies -General, some courses I already passed in Math, writing, and economics could likely satisfy the option courses in Liberal Studies (General). And ARTH 120, a course that is not that tough but I gave up and failed, is on the list of Liberal Studies (General) in the option part as well, which means I could retake it in the upcoming year to improve my GPA and make progress toward the degree of Liberal Studies (General) at the same time. But for PSCHO 100, which I failed too, I am not going to retake it, at least not this upcoming year. Because it is challenging with plenty of text and mandatory group labs for me, and I know it will stress me out. To make sure I keep following courses, I plan to join a study group online or in person and take advantage of what the university provides, like asking the TAs. After seeing the tough situation and many difficulties I am facing and will need to handle, I would like to go for a General Degree instead of an honors degree. That would reach simpler levels and lighten the course load. I would also like to spread courses over the whole year, including the summer term, which would let me stay on track with a fulfilling schedule to improve and make progress every day and avoid falling into emotional traps. It can shorten the length of time and allow me to have a lighter course load in the fall and spring terms. So I can do my best to make sure the new goal is available, accessible, and realistic.
Considering the interest, I also realize I never really liked or was interested in Mathematics and Statistics, so it has always been a heavy, repeating dual task on my shoulder to satisfy others, which brought extra stress and burden along the way. I have seen how interests have a significant positive effect on helping people be themselves and reach their goals through my friends' experiences, and I recognize it for now. So based on the suggestions and introductions from the academic advisor, school website, and agency, I am willing to change to Liberal Studies-General, which offers a wild range of courses and many opportunities to explore myself, variable fields, humanity, and the world. It is flexible. In terms of difficulty, depth, and fields, which allows me to choose and immerse myself in what I really want to learn, like history, language, religion, and biology, and adjust according to my abilities and interests. I am also strongly attracted to the idea that by finishing the plan, students could develop critical thinking, analytical, writing, and oral communication skills. Those skills and advantages are what I am really interested in and enjoy. And they would definitely help me build confidence and step out of my closed mind, which are important to conquering my mental health problems and helping establish a good foundation for the future and my whole life.
I did tend to miss classes, avoid my readings and assignments, and fall behind on my coursework. After talking to the counselor and my family for recent weeks, I realized what I believed became barriers that stopped me to implement actions. They were fakes or just my imaginations but caused much stress and anxiety. So I have been adapting and will be working on it by opening my mind to external world. I have also created a light-loaded schedule for recent weeks that includes a study section and followed it to practice and get prepared. I already told my family the true situation I was in to let them acknowledge the reality and break down some impediments together. There won't be any bubbles of lies and imagination between me and my family from now on, which will allow me to do as we plan without other redundant concerns. Being honest to my family and solving problems together are what I will keep doing in the future to reduce my emotional burden and avoidance tendency. In addition to overcoming the low energy and bad emotions of depression, I am already on a wait list for medicine prescriptions. I've never tried medicine before, so it would be a new method and provide at least some relief from bad emotions. I would keep going and explore more with the counselor at the university once a week since I found the emotional support and objective opinions necessary and basic to expand my cognition, motivate me, inspire me, and even pull me back on the right path. Besides, I will keep seeking various methods to help combat depression and reduce its effect on me. My parents and I have reached an agreement on the future plan. They also made an appointment with another native counselor to help our relationship and solve the problem together. To directly and truly ensure I won't miss classes, assignments, or examinations, my mother will come to accompany me in the coming academic year if the petition is approved. I am going to set a healthy and reasonable daily schedule according to the academic support resources. With special deadlines and reward rules marked on the schedule, it would make a difference step by step, building new beneficial habits from behavior to mental response. If there is spare time, I would also like to join the English Conversation Circle that is hosted by Student Academic Success Services and QUIC every week. The goals of such group work are to help students build their own confidence, feel connected with peers and the community together, stay in touch, and promote motivation and interests by talking about their daily lives and sharing their ideas in classes. It is not an academic-focused club, but it still helps students in their studies. To keep myself on track, fight against depression, and achieve success, those goals and such an atmosphere are helpful and important to me. It would help me be socially connected to live well and participate in my academic program. It is a good chance and bridge to help me know myself, manage my depression, and engage me well since I was always limited by my narrow perception. I believe it will play an important role in engaging me in school life.
I chose a General Degree with consideration of financial factors as well. We have wasted much time and money on past mistakes, and a General Degree requires 30 units less and lower-level courses. It is still within our reach. Overall, Liberal Studies-General is affordable, with less risk and more potential and interests to facilitate my academic success.
In my case, with such a history of depression and anxiety , in spite of using as many resources as possible, it will still require me to force myself and pay much more effort to fight with myself. This is an inevitable process to go through, no matter the success of my academy career or my entire life. I acknowledged it and decided to make a change and take responsibility for myself instead of giving in and avoiding. Therefore, I am writing this petition sincerely and hope it can be approved. I would truly appreciate your approval of my petition.
Thank you for your reading and consideration.
Best Regards,
20078138
Jiayi Kang
Documentation
Professional Letter: JK Letter of support AUG2023.pdf