Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am writing to waive the 21-day appeal deadline, in order to appeal to remove some courses from my transcript. During my first two years at Queen¿¿s I was suffering from a mental illness that rendered me incapable of succeeding academically. It had many other effects on my life, and partly due to the mental state this illness caused me, I unfortunately did not seek help of any kind during those two years. This included doing anything to redeem the state of my academics, like submitting appeals. I was unable to realize or get the help I needed to get better, let alone get the academic help I needed. I took a year off of school after those first two years, at first with no intention of returning, and therefore no need to do anything about the grades I had received. Ultimately, after spending the year understanding my situation and recovering, I did decide to return. After two years of suffering from mental illness and at best, barely passing courses, the prospect of trying again was frankly terrifying but I had worked hard at better managing my mental health and felt ready to return. To help make my return successful, I found a psychologist in Kingston to see. At this time, appealing past grades was the last thing on my mind ¿¿ I wasn¿¿t sure if I would be able to do any better than I had before, and being successful and staying healthy was my only focus. Happily, I remained healthy, re-took the necessary first year courses and successfully got into my program of choice. Since then, school has been a whirl wind for me ¿¿ following my first year back, I fit all of my degree requirements into two years (last year and this current school year), taking courses every summer to stay on track, and realized I was going to be able to graduate this spring. I honestly hadn¿¿t believed it until recently, but when I realized graduating had become a reality, I looked into the process of appealing grades. Now that I am ready to graduate, and have (almost) officially succeeded at something I truly considered was impossible for me for a long time, it is important to me that my academic records to be representative of that success. The grades I received in those two years are not at all representative of my ability and removing them would be a sort of final step in my recovery and return to school. I hope that you will understand my situation and grant permission to waive the deadline. I know this is well after the fact, but this is something that is very important to me, and truly something that hadn¿¿t crossed my mind until I could really believe that my past does not need to continue defining me, and I am able to be successful despite it.