Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,


I am petitioning to drop all 5 courses I took in the Fall 2022 term: CHEM 281, PHGY 215, EPID 301, MICR 271, and COMM 200 (all of them in Fall, 2022). Due to my extenuating circumstances, I was unable to perform anywhere near the best of my abilities and thus believe my grades for each of these classes unjustly reflect my academic and intellectual abilities.

The extenuating circumstances in question were numerous and compounding in nature, resulting in an overwhelming sense of hopelessness that significantly hindered my ability to perform any important function, beyond their direct physical impairments; at the beginning of October, I badly broke my L3 fingertip, which started an arduous 6-month-long recovery process (which was ‘supposed’ to take 2 months, before endless complications) during which almost all aspects of my daily life were affected–from showering, to eating, to even sleeping–which undoubtedly added much stress and distraction to my studies. At the end of the month, my grandmother very suddenly passed away after a haemorrhagic stroke. Naturally, this was a personally traumatic time and was only made worse by the fact that I was already injured and struggling with the term. Days after returning to Kingston from the funeral service, in the beginning of November, I was assaulted in a hate-crime event after standing up for a friend being racially abused. This incident caused dental injury that incurred extreme costs on my finances and confidence, costs which I am still paying more than a year later. All this understandably felt immensely overwhelming, and the sense that everything possible was going wrong made it very hard to focus on even maintaining or repairing my academics for the term, much less excelling.

It’s worth noting that, while this Fall 2022 term was indeed extreme and traumatic, I have always struggled to excel since coming to university; going from A+ marks in highschool to regularly failing classes due to poor work ethic and almost nonexistent motivation was not a situation in which I’d ever imagined I’d find myself. Perhaps to no surprise, I was diagnosed with ADHD during the summer. It’s clear to me now that this condition has not only hampered my success here at university, without the doting attention of teachers, but likely compounded the suffocating effects of the extreme events I experienced during the Fall 2022 term.

While I was hoping I’d be able to write this letter, a year after the term in focus, from a position of impressive growth and recovery, it seems there is more for me to learn about managing my new diagnosis and finding my own ways to succeed after allowing bad habits and work ethic for so long. Having a near-constant hunger for perfection, I still struggle to embrace this condition and accept its flaws. I have accepted medical treatment, to mixed results as of yet, and will continue to seek further assistance to ensure that I flourish in the little time I have left here. I intend to open an ongoing conversation with the University’s Accommodations Team to learn more about the support being offered to students like me, and plan to seek out additional counselling services (as I did after the Fall in question, with embedded-counsellor Emily Blacker being immensely helpful) to help minimize the burden this condition places on my work ethic.

More specifically to the classes in question (Fall 2022), I have already retaken several of them (CHEM 281 was already taken earlier, and MICR 221 in place of 271 alongside PHGY 215 in Winter 2024) and plan to retake all that are pertinent to the Life Sciences degree I am pursuing (EPID 301). Over the past year, while I am still living with some consequences of the traumatic events described in 2022, I have been able to move on and look forward again. This 2023-2024 academic year has presented me with amazing opportunities and experiences, and I fully intend to thrive in the upcoming term, having overcome the fear of asking for help.

I am truly passionate about learning and gaining knowledge, and while I continue to struggle with showing that in my academic performances due to my condition and habits, I hope that you will consider granting me the chance to do so free from the burden of the Fall 2022 term on my transcript. As earlier stated, it truly does not reflect my character, intellect, or commitment to my studies and to Queen’s University.



Thank you for your consideration, and I promise you that this request will improve my academic performance and mental condition immensely.

Nikolaus Schade