Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Associate Deans of Studies,
My name is Kaelyn Hawkins and I am appealing to be enrolled in both MATH 121 and BIOL 102 for the summer 2017 session. Both courses are offered from May until July 12th. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline in applying for the summer courses as I did not receive my winter term marks until a few days after the application deadline, as well as the fact that I was recovering from a surgery I had on May 5th along with travelling back and forth to Kingston from my hometown of Oshawa for the surgery.
As you can see in my transcript I did poorly in these courses when I took them during the fall and/or winter terms and this can be partly attributed to my struggle with mental health in the fall semester. I suffered an extreme low point with my depression and anxiety that continued on a bit into the winter term, but I sought help and tried my very best to pull my grades out of the gutter, which is evident in the fact that my BIOL 102 mark was a D- and my BIOL 103 mark was a B-. Unfortunately, due to my extremely poor performance in first semester, some of my full year course marks were brought down significantly despite my best efforts in second semester to improve them, such as MATH 121 where I had a 40 mark in first semester and ended the course with a D-. I found that a counselor in my residence that I met with, Freeman Woolnough, helped me find possible solutions to deal with my depression and anxiety in relation to school. This meeting was a crucial step for me in the process of getting help for my mental illnesses because I had never sought help from any professionals before. Freeman helped me realize that seeking help from him and other professionals was what I needed to help me help myself get better. In the future, I will continue to use resources provided both by Queen¿¿s and other professional sources to help me tackle my mental health issues to better myself emotionally and mentally, as well as academically. On the same note, looking at my grades alone from first to second semester, and even throughout second semester, it is clear to see that I discovered what worked for me in terms of studying and learning, and my academic performance improved considerably when I did so. Now that I have found what works for me I strongly believe that I have a strong chance for success in my future academic endeavors, while continuing to further improve my studying, note taking, and overall learning abilities.
I am aware that classes have already begun for the summer term and I am about a week behind now, but I have already taken both of these courses and I firmly believe that I will have little to no issue with getting caught up with the coursework if you allow me to enroll late in these courses. I have plenty of notes and resources to help me get caught up on top of the fact that it will be a lot easier to learnt the material the second time around as the concepts will be familiar. I am also aware that academic appeals can take up to several weeks to be approved and I am already a week behind in the summer term, but even being two to two and a half weeks behind is okay for me. I truly believe that I can catch up in the courses anywhere up to that point, as I have already begun reviewing the content from the courses that I have in preparation for retaking the courses.
Finally, the reason I am so desperate to get into these courses and improve my marks is not only because understanding the concepts better will aid me in future years, but also because my current GPA is 1.43. In order to even get onto the waiting lists of any of the science majors for second year I need at least a 1.60 GPA and I believe that retaking BIOL 102 and MATH 121 in the summer term will allow me to boost my GPA even that little bit to help me get into the major I want, which is Environmental Biology.
Thank you for your consideration,
Kaelyn Hawkins