Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom it May Concern,

My name is Claudia McNulty and I am now a second year Politics Major. I am appealing to drop Geology 104 from my schedule, which I took in the winter semester of 2015.

Second semester of last year, I made a mistake and chose to take Geology 104, despite never having taken a geology course before and dropping science after 10th grade in high school. At the time, I was under the impression that taking 5 classes was of the utmost importance, regardless of the level of difficulty and my lacking experience in this field. I realize now that it would have been a much better decision to only take four courses that are in my field of experience, than to put myself through the stress and frustration of this class that I could not grasp. With that, I have learned my lesson and will not be taking any more science classes.

Second semester proved to be a very difficult time for me regarding my mental health. As some of the Queen's Student Wellness staff knows, my younger sister was hospitalized for the majority of second semester, and largely due to this my own mental health was dramatically declining. I had multiple hospital visits, some of which turned into overnight stays. Adding to this difficulty of missing sleep and classes because of my time in the hospital, was the fact that I had little to no motivation to attend any of my lectures. This caused the most problems for me in Geology where the lectures are virtually essential to understanding the curriculum. Additionally, I was not taking medication for my clinical depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder at this time, which I began taking approximately a month after finishing the school year.

Only a couple days before I was scheduled to write my exam for this Geology course, I was hospitalized again and instructed to speak to Freeman Woolnough, who assisted me in the re-scheduling of some of my exams to give me time to take care of myself. These exams I was able to write at a later date, which was beneficial to my health but was detrimental to my academics. At this point, I honestly cannot remember why I didn't have this exam re-scheduled or why I was not aware of the fact that I was still expected to write it at some point. For the last couple months I have been under the impression that it would remain an Incomplete mark in my file, which I have recently been informed is incorrect. For my own ignorance, I apologize and realize I should have made sure this issue was resolved a long time ago.

I would like to ask for this class to be removed from my schedule and dropped from my file. I realize that a lot of time has passed since I took this course, but I am now completely unprepared to write this exam and was not in a place to be successful in this course in the first place. I am sorry to inconvenience you like this, but I am in much better condition this year and can assure you I will not make this mistake or put myself in a position like this again. I wish my mental health last year had allowed me to at least have a chance in this course, but I do care about my marks and would prefer this mistake not result in a drastically lower GPA.

I will be contacting Freeman Woolnough to ask that he please provide you with my documentation from last year to assist in this process.

Thank you for your time,

Claudia McNulty