Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean (Studies),

My name is Claire Kim and I am appealing to drop my STAT 263 (Winter 2016) course. During the 2015-2016 year I was enrolled as a post-degree distance studies student to retake a few past courses.

Providing a bit of background information, at the end of the first semester of my senior year (December 2014) my grandmother passed away. It was an extremely difficult period for me and did not return for final examinations. Upon returning for second semester, I had to seek help through the health counseling and disability services at Queen¿¿s where I was diagnosed with situational depression and anxiety. Although it was one of the most difficult periods in my life, with the help of the medication prescribed to me, I was able to direct any energy I had left towards my studies graduating that year on the Dean¿¿s Honour List.

Originally my plans were to apply to graduate school programs by January 2015, but due to the death I was not able to submit any applications on time. As my final year at Queen¿¿s came to a close, I decided to enroll as a part-time student in post-degree courses. I had a few courses from first year I did not do so well in and thought that it would be a good use of my time to re-take them. I ultimately knew I would apply to graduate schools this year (January 2016) and decided to take STAT 263 because a Statistics course was a requirement for some of the schools I applied to. Although I already have a previous Statistics credit, I received a B in that course and was worried it may not suffice as a competitive mark.

The past year has been a roller coaster of emotional events for me. On September 30th my family and I moved out of our home into a rental home. We had to sell our previous house due to many personal and financial reasons. The death of my grandmother took a big emotional toll on my mother, and I spent the majority of the year helping her out at work and taking care of her. First semester was admittedly a lot different than I anticipated. Being a distance studies student is nothing like being a student on-campus and I struggled with the inability to see my professors or TA¿¿s as I often did back on campus. When second semester came along, I was contemplating dropping courses. I wanted to be smart and realistic about my goals so I thought about potentially dropping PSYC or SOCY. I did not do well on the PSYC midterm but that seemed to be the general consensus for the entire class. I even phoned my TA William Munn on January 7th 2016 to discuss whether I should stay in my SOCY course or not. Ultimately, I decided to stay in them because I had invested an entire semester into the course already, and I believed I could still achieve at least a letter grade higher than my previous mark. My phone call with my TA really motivated me.

STAT 263 started and I kept up with the course content but was a bit anxious as the concepts were challenging at times so I contemplated dropping the course. I am very aware and conscious of my marks and I never wanted anything that could potentially taint my ability to get into graduate school. I decided to make my decision after the midterm on February 23rd 2016. I wrote the midterm and received my mark February 25th 2016, the day before the deadline for dropping courses. I received a B-, which was a positive indication of working towards a B+/A- and stayed in the course. Unfortunately, I was terribly wrong.
After the month of February my mother¿¿s small business began to severely struggle. In the past few years my mother¿¿s business has not been doing well. This is why I received bursaries for three years from Queen¿¿s as well as OSAP. However, within the last few months it became so bad I had to start helping out a lot at work and we were on the verge of having to sell her store. On top of that, the STAT 263 material became exponentially more difficult than anything I could have imagined. I struggled a lot with the new concepts and even asked a friend to start tutoring me whenever he had any spare time. I was able to keep up with PSYC and SOCY only because the content was more fluid and a build up from what we learned over the span of an entire year instead of just a semester. The courses were also just more manageable because everything was broken down into mini weekly assignments/posts/quizzes.

After the STAT 263 exam ended I felt so terribly about the exam that I am positive I failed the course. This one, half-year course could potentially ruin my entire future academic career. I will not be accepted to any of the Master¿¿s programs I applied to since this course will not only over-shadow the previous statistics course I took, but all my other courses as well. This will also be the only course I have failed in my entire academic career. It was tarnish my senior year GPA and all the hard work I put into doing well in order to get into a Master¿¿s program. I truly believe it is not an accurate representation of my work ethic or academic ability and will make such a severe impact on my future.

This appeal process has taught me how much extenuating circumstances can have an effect on an individual¿¿s life and academic performance.