Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I am appealing for the opportunity to appeal after the deadline, and to drop several courses from my years at Queen¿¿s; I have listed them below. I have had severe mental health issues for the past four years, and it is something that I am still struggling with.

COMM 211 (2012 Fall)
ECON 231 (2012 Fall)
E CON 262 (2013 Winter)
ECON 232 (2013 Winter)
ECON 212 (2013 Winter)
MATH 126 (2013 Winter)
MATH 121 (2013 Summer)
STAT 263 (2013 Summer)
CLST 205 (2014 Summer)
PHAR 100 (2014 Summer)
HIST 400 (2015 Winter)
HIST 257 (2015 Winter)

I will try to be as succinct as possible in my summary. I had anxiety issues in first year that went untreated as I attributed my emotional state to a close friend¿¿s suicide. My anxiety continued into second year and got increasingly worse. I had panic attacks in multiple midterms and at other important academic moments, which led me to seek help from a doctor at Queen¿¿s. I was treated for my anxiety with Zoloft, a medication that was terrible for my mental state. The GP at La Salle did not refer me to a psychiatrist, she just wrote the prescription, something I now would have recognized as a red flag. I spent the rest of second year in a ghost state. I fell into a depression and spent my time staring at walls. I lost interest in life, I didn¿¿t attend class, and I was suicidal. I returned to Toronto to speak to my family doctor who advised me to get off of the Zoloft because the empty feeling I had was a side effect of the medication. I weaned off Zoloft and was left with manic depression. I was suicidal and extremely depressed, and I now experienced mania as well. After one night when I had to visit the emergency room I was referred to a psychiatrist at Western General Hospital and he prescribed me Prozac. I thought my mental illness would clear up, but I still continued to have troubles and again found myself struggling in school, though not as much as I had in second year. I had strong mood swings instead of constantly being down. I crashed again at the beginning of my fourth year. I dropped most of my classes in my second semester thinking I could handle the small amount but my moods reached an absolute low. After a close call with suicide in February I was referred to another psychiatrist and this past April I spent a lot of my time at Western General getting rTMS (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation), which the doctor was hoping would help with my symptoms of depression, bipolar, and ADHD. Unfortunately I was in the group of people, about 33, who the treatment did not work on. My psychiatrist then suggested I try a different medication, Wellbutrin XL, which I am currently taking, along with sessions at the Mindfullness Clinic, which are helping me to learn coping mechanism that allow me to control my imbalanced emotions through physical action. I have been on this new medication and on counselling since May now, and the effects are striking. My psychiatrist and I are both confident that we have found the thing that will help to end my psychological problems.
Every time I made a change in my medication or treatment I was optimistic that I would be able to handle school. It looks like I have made the same mistakes repeatedly, where I take courses, fail them, and then appeal them because of mental illness. But it is not the same mistake. My mental health has constantly changed and transformed over the pass four years and each time I have to learn how to handle it only for it to change again.
I did not appeal to drop my second year courses right away because I was still in a low mood at the end of the year, which keeps me from doing anything. In that mood I don¿¿t care about anything. My mind is preoccupied with suicide, and so worrying about my degree isn¿¿t on my mind, as I don¿¿t think I will live to see the end of it at that moment. When I came out of that mood, the appeal was already late so I thought that I should wait until I actually put some good grades on my transcript to prove to you, and the others reviewing my appeal, that I had in fact improved, and that I was capable of continuing with my education. I improved slightly, but because I haven¿¿t been able to manage my mental illness yet I have still had many problems since then.
In the instructions for an appeal, it says to describe what you will do in the future to make sure you don¿¿t repeat your past actions. You can see from my history that I have been trying to make changes in my life. I have tried multiple forms of medications, therapy and treatment and it made no great improvement until now. I am still using all of the resources I have to maintain this new level of stability. I do hope to finish my degree over the next year, starting this January, since I have more support living at home, and though I can¿¿t promise that everything will work out perfectly, I can promise that I am trying my absolute best and that it means very much to me to finish my degree. If it didn¿¿t, I would have left Queen¿¿s when all of these problems started in the first place and came home to focus entirely on my mental health. Though I do think that I am in the right place to be able to handle returning to school, I am waiting until January so as not to change a repeat of my former mistakes. My hope is to get a masters degree after I finish at Queen¿¿s, and with my transcript the way it is now that is close to impossible. I appreciate everything that Queen¿¿s has done in the past to support me academically and personally, and I am asking again for the compassion required to save my future in academics, and likely my future career.

Thank you so much for your time. If you require any further information from me I am more than happy to provide it.

Best regards,

Kayla Arviv