Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean of Studies,

I attended Queen¿¿s University for the Physical Education program in 2013-2014 while playing football for the golden gaels where I attended the first semester courses and proceeded to be absent in the second semester courses due to unfortunate circumstances. I made the mistake of not dropping classes in the second semester believing that they would not affect me in the future. Of course, universities do reserve the right to look at all academic records from secondary school as well as post-secondary where my thoughts were that they would only look at secondary school marks. As I am now getting ready to apply for university, these failing marks are greatly negatively affecting me. Now, I am appealing for your generosity to drop KNPE 125, KNPE 167, and PSYC 100B from my winter term of 2014.
As for what happened, after the first semester of my studies, I came to the conclusion that I would no longer be attending the university in the following year as the program was just not right for me. As well, to make matters worse, during the Christmas break right before the New Year, I pulled and partially tore ligaments in my left ankle which set off a chain reaction of other lingering injuries in my right leg due to compensation. All of this had me in bed for weeks as well as attending physiotherapy which impeded me from returning to school immediately. Once I finally did come back to Queen¿¿s in January, I fell behind in my classes. Never having fully healed, I continued to go through team workouts in an attempt to regain some strength but never being successful, I ended up re-injuring my ankle again in February to the point where I could not walk at all. This, of course, made it even more difficult to attend my classes. Finally, I had enough and decided it was best for myself to switch programs and take some time off of football in order to recover.
It was then, once I could walk on my own, that I had spoken to a guidance counselor about switching into engineering but failed to meet the pre-requisites since I did not have high school Physics courses completed. After this disappointment, I spoke to an adviser about my courses and whether or not I should have them dropped but she told me that I may as well stay in them as dropping them would not be beneficial financially since I would lose the remaining portion of my scholarship. Foolishly, I complied with the adviser with no consideration of my academic record in mind. Time went by and I decided I really did not want to study Physical Education any further and decided to pursue the trades. After much research and consulting with workers in the field, I decided to attend Sheridan College for their electrical program. With my application completed, I also took a job working for a renovation company which prompted me to leave Kingston altogether before the end of the semester.
Moving forward, studying electrical techniques at Sheridan was very enjoyable, particularly the theoretical portion of it. With a lighter workload in college, I had some extra time to pursue the Physics courses that I was missing in order to be considered for engineering. That¿¿s when I enrolled in grade 11 Physics with the Independent Learning Center online and enjoyed it so much so that I am now enrolled in SCH4U and have completed SPH4U. After completion of my college program, I was enthralled with the idea of returning to university in order to study electrical engineering to ultimately work in the renewable energies sector with Tesla Motors or Canadian Solar. Now, I have completed grade 12 Physics as well, I am re-doing grade 12 chemistry in order to be as competitive as possible to be admitted into university. That is why I come to you, I wish to continue my post-secondary studies in order to be an engineer in the future and these failing marks are hurting my chances to do so. It may go without being said but I would be remised if I did not mention that those failures are not a representation of myself, I take pride in my academics, I just made a mistake. Please allow me to drop this misrepresentation of myself.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Sincerely,
Alexandre Coutu