Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Petition Letter

To whom it may concern,
My name is Nicole Mohajer Afshar and my student number is 20229710. I am writing this letter to formally request a late course drop for two classes that I took over the summer term of my first year. CLST 205 and ARTH 120 are the courses I took during the 2021 Summer term after a fairly successful first year during covid, while I was living with my parents.
During this first year of university, I was already experiencing some hardships. I had developed an eating disorder very early on into the pandemic which only got worse as I entered my first semester online with Queen’s. After an exacerbating first semester I decided that it was time to start therapy. This decision proved to be a great first step in levelling out symptoms of depression, anxiety, etc.
That being said, as the first year was coming to a close, I decided that it was time to move out of my family home due to familial tensions. At this point, I had already enrolled in the summer courses I was hoping to take but my moving out had worsened my situation with my family and I was essentially cut off for leaving. Although I was still in therapy at this time, my mental health was beginning to deteriorate at a quick rate. My eating disorder worsened without any family looking out for me, my coming out as queer had shunned me from a large community I had back home and isolation became unbearable. While I was hoping to delve into my studies I instead turned to alcohol and drugs and unfortunately developed an addiction.
After a turbulent and stressful summer I was able to reconnect with my parents who chose to support me through my education financially. I have since been trying to reestablish my academic success, along with the support of QSAS and my therapist which have helped significantly. Moreover, I have been working on reaching full sobriety and while I am not there yet I am not where I was 3-4 years ago, a lot of progress has been made especially in the summer of 2024. This can be seen in the improvement of my grades in the Fall semester of 2024. While I graduate this spring, I am a Con-ed student who will do their last year of the education program next year. After this I am now hoping to return to Queen’s to complete a Masters degree.
I understand that it may be a little late in my degree to begin worrying about GPA, I am willing and determined to improve it as much as I can. As a result I am requesting the late drop of these courses from my transcript. I regret that I did not attempt to do this sooner, however I only learned through a peer in one of my classes that I could submit a petition in order to achieve this. In addition to this, within the year of these failed courses I was regrettably still not in a good mental state to do so. Along with this letter I have submitted an attestation for what I have claimed above from my therapist, Sara Saniee, but please let me know if there are any further questions I may answer.

Kindly,
Nicole Mohajer Afshar