Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am writing to appeal the Faculty¿¿s request that I must withdraw from Queen¿¿s for a minimum of 1 year.
There were a plethora of reasons that ultimately resulted in my insufficient academic performance, as well negatively impacting my overall university experience. Prior to starting the academic year, my Grandmother passed away. Having never dealt with bereavement or loss before, I struggled at the beginning of the year which led to terrible habits. I struggled to focus in class and had great difficulty completing my assignments. This worsened by the fact that my family lives in Dubai. Because of this, I had difficulty finding support and assistance with these struggles. I understand that this is something most university students must go through, however, it was a new experience for me and a significant transition from my years before.
In the past, I have always gone to my father for help in all matters, yet for the first time in my life I was unable to. This was another struggle for me in my first semester and led to me often sitting on assignments for days. I was often paralyzed and overwhelmed by the amount of unfinished work and not knowing where to start on my assignments. Through this I believe that I became discouraged and found myself in a downward spiral of unproductivity that was hard to recover from. However, I am confident in my ability to overcome this and learn to use the resources that are accessible to me at Queen¿¿s. This is something that became apparent to me towards the end of the last semester where I worked closely with an external counsellor that helped me become more organized and improved my overall productivity. Unfortunately, it was too late for this to have an impact on my end of year examinations, yet I learned the value of these skills and tasks, and will be able to use them to improve my standing in the following years. Overall, the combination of these factors made my first year very grueling and caused great difficulty in meeting the academic requirements of the university.