Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Friday, April 27th, 2018

To Associate Dean (Studies) of Arts and Sciences:

I am appealing to add COMP 390A (Fall 2017) and COMP 390B (Winter 2018). This multi-term course is for students pursuing a 12 or 16-month internship sequence through QUIP and the School of Computing.

In May 2017, my father became severely ill with a condition requiring him to stay home and require additional care. This illness was ongoing until January 2018. His treatments for this illness occurred once a month for 6 months, starting in the middle of June 2017. This prompted me to take proactive action for my own mental health and pursue an internship for 4 months starting in September 2017 with the option of extending to 12 months instead of returning to school in the Fall of 2017. I hold myself to a high academic standard which has pushed me to achieve a 4.14 GPA for the past three years. If I came back to Queen's and pursued courses of any type it would have been detrimental to my mental health. This internship provided me the flexibility to be there for my father and my family that a course load at Queen's would have not. Being able to be there to support my father and family helped with my own mental health and how I dealt with my father's severe diagnosis. My father had one of his monthly treatments in September which were very rough on him and had adverse side effects. This stress resulted in me not being able to enroll in COMP 390A or COMP390B before the September 22, 2017 deadline for multi-term courses as I was focused on helping my father recover from his treatments. Furthermore, I was unable to submit an appeal before the 21-day deadline because my father was recovering from the side-effects of his September treatments all the way until his next round 28 days later, thus overlapping with the 21-day deadline on October 12th and 13th. The weeks leading up to his October treatment were spent preparing for how to best help my father with the side effects of the treatments after the last round resulted in him being sent to the emergency. I did not feel mentally prepared to submit an appeal letter and the following documents required at any time during my father's illness especially when he was receiving treatment. My internship sequence was also not a confirmed 12 months at the time of enrolment for these courses so I was unable to be enrolled in them until now when my internship sequence has been confirmed as eligible for both courses and is supported by both the School of Computing and the QUIP office.

My father is now in the process of recovering from his illness which has been treated successfully. I have continued to work in this internship as I remain proactive about my own mental health and know that this internship is helping reduce the impact of these extenuating circumstances on my mental health. I will be continuing to work in an internship at a different organization - this is supported by the QUIP office, the Computing (COMP390A & COMP390B) Internship instructor, and the Undergraduate Chair for Computing. A letter from both the instructor of the internship course and the QUIP office will be supplied early next week to formalize their support. An email from the undergraduate chair expressing his support has also been attached. I will also be returning to Queen's to pursue my fourth year studies in Fall 2018. For me to be eligible for these two courses I am required to continue my internship on May 7th, 2018 as indicated in the letters that will be provided by both the School of Computing and the QUIP office. My internship sequence cannot continue without these two courses on my transcript. Thus, I am asking for consideration to have the decision regarding my appeal be sent to me before May 4th, 2018. Thank you for your consideration of my appeal, extenuating circumstances, and very time-sensitive situation.

Regards,
Vinith Menon Suriyakumar
Bachelor of Computing
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