Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean (Studies),

I am appealing to drop PHYS 117 (Fall/Winter, 2015-16) and WRIT 120 (Winter, 2016). Since first year I have been dealing with personal family problems, but this year my circumstances with my family severely affected my academics. In September 2015, my mother and I left my father due to a difficult family situation. For the first six weeks my mother lived at a women's shelter, leaving me to take care of her since we do not have any family or friends in Canada. We come from an Indian background where our community believes it is their duty to stop a home from breaking. This meant people from my community harassing me with emails, phone calls, and even showing up to my apartment here in Kingston. While trying to manage school, I had to deal with these individuals, and my father who kept trying to contact me through emails, phone calls, and personal visits as well. I am not on speaking terms with my father due to our own issues. And in the midst of all of this, I had to visit my mother back home in Cornwall every other weekend to make sure she was physically, mentally and emotionally stable. I basically had to be my mother's care taker by calling her and talking for almost three hours every day, visiting her every other weekend, dealing with the divorce lawyers, making sure she went to counselling, etc. Culturally, I was also responsible for her in front of family and friends back home, who expected I take the up most care of her. In December, I thought my father would stop his tactics to bring us back home and try to move on with the divorce, but it kept getting worse. He kept proposing difficult settlements for the divorce, harassing family back home in India, defaming my mother and I in the community, etc. In other words, my family situation kept me from my studies, from interacting with friends, to the point that I started getting depressed and felt isolated and pressurized to be responsible for everything. Most of my time in second year went into dealing with my personal situation rather than being able to focus on schoolwork. In the winter semester, I decided to seek help by going to the counselling services offered at Queen's. I found it to be really helpful by making me understand what I was going through and helping me to cope with the situation a bit better. Now in May, my mother and I just came back from visiting family in India after nine years. This helped my mother a lot mentally and emotionally to get strong, knowing her family supports her. By September, the divorce will be finalized in terms of all legal and financial matters, and after our visit, my family and I discussed with my mother that there were a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders. I was able to communicate and agree on boundaries with my mother and help her understand that I need to prioritize my education first. And now that she is reconnected with friends and family in India, and her group of friends in Canada, she is starting to get to better state of mind. Currently I am taking two online summer courses to make sure I stay on track academically and they are going well. I am finally getting back to a normal environment that will allow me to focus on school.

Praisy Hunter