Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing (to drop all of my fall semester courses, 2016) because it has come to my realization that at this pace I will most likely fail half of my classes and do poorly on the rest. The reason(s) that have caused me to do poorly at school this semester is due to the fact that on September 24th, 2016 my Mother passes away (I was only told on the 26th). The psychological damage it left me with was more painful than anything I've ever faced, and school, friends, partying, studying, my future, none of them seemed to matter for a long time afterwards. To make matters worse, my family is in California, I spent less than a week back home after finding out the news and only one day after the funeral. Being thrown back into the entity that Queens is having only had one day to grieve with the family affected me negatively in the weeks to come after I had arrived. At first I thought i could bear the burden, I went to classes, hung out with friends, I basically faked it till i made it except I never made it. Being alone without the family and being surrounded by people who never knew my mother and could only hope to give shallow words of comfort (not there fault since no one here knew her intimately) just caused more anguish within me. Then I decided to stop going out, in hopes that I could last until winter break to properly recuperate once I returned home. However isolation, for the longest part, drove me into an even darker form of depression for a while. With all of the thoughts of, anger, sadness, distrust, confusion, etc. it had become hard to just focus on things that were once so simple. I couldn't put my mind to reading a textbook, or listening to a professor when he/she spoke and next thing i knew it had been 4-6 weeks before I went to a single class or since I hung out with many of my friends. I want to be able to start fresh next semester without the weight of failing all my classes due to my circumstance weighing over me; my supporting psychologist/counselor is: Dr. Tonye Bauermann. My supporting academic advisor is Haley Everson. I don't want this semester to be a reminder of the dark phase of my life I went through, and I don't want this semester to be a reflection of somebody I'm not (or it to NOT reflect the potential I have as a student). Thank you.