Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Good Day Associate Dean,

My name is Vanja Bodja, I am from Etobicoke, Ontario, and I am a fourth year student under the Arts and Science Faculty. I am currently finishing my Bachelor of Honors in Political Science with a Minor in Economics. I am writing this petition letter as a request to add classes after the add deadline.

While I went into Queen’s University with the hope of entering Queen’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics specialization, I quickly realized I had an increasing interest in focusing only on political science and economics. Following my first year, I entered into a medial degree of Political Science and Economics and continued this degree path until the end of my third year. As my studies progressed, I found myself struggling to balance my extracurriculars, work, and my studies all together. As I come from a lower income immigrant household with two dependents, my sister and I, both of which are in university, I was grateful to be qualified for OSAP, Queen’s General Bursary, and Queen’s Work Study Entitlement. While this aid alleviated a lot of the financial stress around tuition, I still continued to work as a waitress in downtown Kingston for three years in order to afford my living expenses. This coupled with my extracurricular participation as a member of Queen’s Model United Nations Team, journalist for The Observer, and marketing coordinator for Qplus, led me feeling very overwhelmed by my medial. The arduous mathematical work within my economics courses along with the laborious writing/reading within politics led me to switch my program at the end of my third year. After fulfilling the majority of my economic degree requirements, in my third year, I switched my program to my current program in hopes of alleviating academic stress and bettering my GPA.

While the beginning of my fourth year left me burnt out and depressed with financial stress because I was constantly working and barely making ends meet in Kingston, I rediscovered my academic motivation by the winter semester. By the Winter 2023 semester, I was able to maintain a 3.26 GPA. A lot of my academic pressure was alleviated in the second half of my fourth year because my parents were approved for a large credit loan and therefore, I finally had a financial safety net. If I could not meet my monthly rent, utilities, and other expenses, they were willing to help via the loan although this was a burden. While my grades suffered in my fourth year fall semester, it led me to fall behind in my program and therefore I now have returned to Queens to complete one more semester. This leads me to the position I am currently in.

As the majority of my program is in person classes, I took an eight month break between the end of April, 2023 and the beginning of this January, 2024. This allowed me to bartend over those eight months, save money and afford my living expenses in my last semester as OSAP loans continue to pay my tuition. While I have always vigorously followed my academic progress, my previous medial required me to take either POLS 285 Introduction to Statistics or ECON 250 Introductory Statistics. Both courses are similar, and therefore SOLUS forced me to choose one in which I chose ECON 250. In doing so, my academic progress report on SOLUS said I was short in my POLS requirements because I lacked a prerequisite (POLS 285) for upper year courses. Since I lacked a prerequisite, I had to email each instructor individually an admissions request for 300/400+ POLS courses since SOLUS denied my enrollment due to lack of prerequisites. As I would view my academic progress, I simply assumed I met all the requirements in order to graduate this spring of 2024 because my academic progress always showed I was missing a course (POLS 285). It was not until a few days ago, after I applied for graduation and emailed the academic advisory that I realized I am short one POLS or POLS/SUB course in order to graduate.

Therefore my sincere request is as follows. While I am aware the last day to add classes was January 19th, and I take full responsibility for realizing this issue late, I was hoping that the academic deadline could be waived/extended. My plan would be to enroll in DEVS 230 which is an online POLS/SUB course this winter (2024) semester. I have emailed Prof. Mark Hostetler regarding my situation in hopes that he would allow me late enrollment and, if he accepts, I have promised him to catch up on the missed work and will notify him that he must email asc.petitions@queensu.ca his acceptance. I also promise the board I will pay my remaining tuition immediately and I will commit to being more responsible within finishing my degree.

Thank you for your time and I hope you deeply consider this request I am asking of. If this request does get approved, I will be forever grateful as it will allow me to graduate on time, enhance my future and improve my future career.

Best Regards,
Vanja Bodja