Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am petitioning the faculty’s decision to withdraw from Queens for a year, as well as petitioning for a late drop of my courses with F grades this past year, including: HIST 299, HIST 252 and HIST 217 (fall 2024), GPHY 101 (fall 2024), DEVS 101 (fall 2024), HIST 218, HIST 246 and HIST 285 (winter 2025), CLST 207 (winter 2025), FILM 220 (winter 2025), and GPHY 102 (winter 2025).

My petition is based on extenuating circumstances relating to my mental health, that have impacted every aspect of my life for the previous two years. In my second year enrolled at Queens, my mental health challenges began to resurface, which combined with being enrolled in a chemistry degree I was not passionate about led to a dramatic increase in my mental health issues. It is because of this struggle that I did not reach out to Queens faculty or Help Services during my 2023/24 year, where my academics first faltered and I was put onto probation. I dealt with this struggle in silence, and the stress causing me to isolate myself only continued into my third year. This school year, these complications with anxiety and other mental health conditions continued to flair up in a way that caused difficulty coping. Dealing with schoolwork became more and more challenging as I devoted more energy to fighting with these issues. When schoolwork started to be affected by this, and I started missing deadlines, my anxiety spiralled and only became harder to maintain. My anxiety would not allow me to reach out for help from professors, my family, Queens' help services, or dropping classes before the deadline. I disconnect from some of my classes, causing me to only focus on the classes I wasn’t demoralised in.

Going forwards into my academic career, I have come up with a plan that I will use in order to organise and guide my future path here at Queens. This plan lays out both how I will work on improving and thriving in my academics, and also how I plan to work on my ability to manage and stay on top of my anxiety. I have already taken the first step of my plan by starting sessions with a psychologist, and we plan to work on my anxiety management skills and other issues over the course of this summer. These meetings will continue through the next school year, as my psychologist and I work together on my personal skills. For the next part of my plan, I am going to start attending and interacting with the Student Academic Success Services and Academic Advising offered here at Queens. Through these services, I plan to work on developing strategies related to my time management, notes/class organisation and being more proactive with my professors about my academic accommodations. Unlike previous years, I will voice my need to be accommodated on assignments with my professors, and work with them to make sure I do not fall behind. Through this, I will be coming back next semester more prepared to deal with my mental health issues while balancing my schoolwork. Upon being permitted to return to academics, I will be enrolling in a reduced course load during the upcoming enrolment period. I believe that with a lower workload, preferably three courses, I will be able to manage my time better and implement my academic plan with greater effectiveness. Throughout these last two years, I have avoided communicating with my parents about this struggle for a variety of reasons. Recently, I have began to work with them to get on a better path of communication between us and am already in a better place. I believe with their support, and the support of my psychologist, returning to academics will be successful.

Currently I am enrolled as a chemistry major, but I believe I would enjoy my studies here at Queens much more if I were to be doing a history degree. I had already thought of this going into this last year, and I took mostly history courses to shadow the history degree path. I thought the courses offered were very interesting, but it was the stress and anxiety that caused me to disconnect. I believe with all the improvement points that I included in my academic plan, I will be able to return to school and be able to enjoy and be passionate about my history classes. Going forward I will be enrolling in a lower number of classes, preferably 3 for the fall semester, to assist the application of my academic plan in these classes. This lower course load would help with balancing my work, and allow me to build better habits for my future studies.