Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,
My name is Menakah Yoharaja and I¿¿m writing this letter in order to explain my appeal. Over the years, I¿¿ve experienced much inconvenience throughout my undergraduate degree at Queens. In my first year I was away from family I experienced financial difficulties that made it difficult for me regardless of the fact that I had OSAP. My mother was having issues because she had little money and couldn¿¿t afford to support herself on top of the fact that I was going to university. The pressure was put on me to keep my family together regardless of the fact that I was away in university. I was struggling to get by while helping my mother pursue a degree in early childhood education so that she could support herself. On top of that, my relationship with my roommate was not the strongest. We shared the same space and had all the same classes together. She would constantly bully me and segregate me from our friends and disregard my feelings over her own. Unknowingly, she would take my labs, notes and even look through my side of the room without my permission. Regardless of that, my best friend had attempted suicide, which was the most difficult part for me. I constantly blamed myself thinking I spent too much time focused on my own needs than someone else. I needed to take sleeping pills in order to deal with it all as I was sleeping less and less. I was also going through relationship issues, as I was being mentally abused at during the period of my studies. Due to these circumstances it became more and more difficult for me to deal with my day to day life and I kept putting myself down because of it. I was only able to get help near the end of my first year as prior to that I didn't know much about counseling services. These events lasted me the entire year of (2012-2013) as I was new ad didn't know how to get help. As a result, it ended up affecting my marks in BIOL 102, BIOL 103 and CHEM112.
My fourth year started of on great but ended very poorly. I had been mentally abused by a team the year before and only completely resolved the situation at the end of fourth year. On top of that, the year before the doctor had told me that I may have cancer due to my by hormone imbalance which shocked me and made it difficult for me to keep up in school. Thankfully, it was determined that I had POS and not cancer, but it was only determined near the end of my fourth year (2016 Winter). I was also informed that my aunt had cancer, while my grandfather got ill. My grandfather passed away the summer of 2016. The hardest part of that year from everything that happened was telling my councilor that I was a victim of sexual abuse. For years I struggled to confront this issue and accept it, but I realized I couldn't do it alone. It took me a long time to talk to my councilor about my sexual abuse and a lot of it was decided at the end of my fourth year as I had decided I couldn't bare to hide it anymore. I am very grateful for my councilor and because of her I have realized my worth and potential and have had a successful semester (2016 Fall). As a result marks in MATH 112 and ASTR 102 were severely affected for that term. I do not wish to elaborate the details of my sexual abuse any further, but if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks,
Menakah