Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Associate Dean (studies),


I am appealing the Faculty's decision that I must withdraw from Queen's for a minimum of one year. In my first year (2014-2015) I was to live off-campus. Instead of living in a residence as most students do, I was to live in a house with people I had never met. In my time off-campus, unfortunate events occurred regarding the housemates I was living with. I was forced to move. I had to find a new place of residence nearing the end of the first term. Living off-campus already had impacted my academic performance in ways I never thought were imaginable. I had already dropped two courses in the middle of the first term. I dropped these courses shortly after I got study help from the useful resources in Stauffer library. I stopped using the resources once I had to face the problems that occurred in my life off-campus. The event of having to relocate made me so far behind in my studies, I never recovered academically. During my relocation, I was getting more and more behind in the assignments that I needed to write for my classes. The stresses of continuously piling assignments overwhelmed me. I faced the problems a second or third year student might have living off-campus and I honestly just wasn't ready, especially in my first year. I learned a lot about living off-campus and the struggles that one can face. In this way, I feel that I am ahead of the first year students that lived in residence. I am quite confident of completing a successful time at Queen's. After all, we do learn from experience.

Spencer Leefe