Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing the Faculty's Decision requesting me to withdraw from studies for a period of one year.

2017 was an awful year for myself, with the winter semester of 2017 seeming unbelievable in retrospect. As such, before stating the extenuating circumstances I would like to supply contact E-mails for people who supported me through the year and can confirm what had happened; my roommate throughout all of this, Jacob Huschilt (j.huschilt@queensu.ca), Yushi Liang (yushi.liang@queensu.ca), who had perhaps saved my life twice within the year, by forcing me to go to the hospital in Fall of 2017 and by being the one who ultimately stopped me from killing myself in the Winter semester of 2017, and Leo Huang (Leo.haung@queensu.ca), who also helped me get through my struggles in the Winter semester of 2017. The record of trips to the hospital and prescriptions, including referral to specialist, are shared with the student health services. However, I have yet to be able to meet with my physician at this time and will send in extra documentation as soon as I am able to meet with her.

During the winter 2017 semester I had personal difficulties which perhaps led to mental health difficulties in that year. In the second week of the 2017 winter semester, one week before I was going to propose to my girlfriend of 4 years, I learned that she had been having relations with other people, and that I may have been exposed to a transmittable infection. Following this argument, she began to falsely accuse others of rape and extortion, and attempted to bring me into some plan, implying that she would like to kill someone if I would help her hide a body. After exiting the relationship, she attempted to bring great difficulties to my life, including trying to convince my friends that I abused and beat her, and following her figuratively stabbing me in the back and continuously contacting me, she attempted to literally stab me in the chest. With these events I was not doing well mentally, having to constantly defend myself from my friends, and deal with the other chaos she brought, including multiple phone calls with police, and a phone call or two from a Kingston mental health crisis line. From this, I was mostly unable to sleep, considering suicide, and had almost given up on life; I attended no classes except for partnered labs so that my partner would not be negatively affected. My mother encouraged me to withdraw for that year, but I believed this was something I could work through alone. This did not seem to be the case however as I lacked the motivation or hope to leave bed until nearly the end of the semester. I decided to get help when I awoke one night with my arm lacerated. In exam season I went to KGH and saw a doctor who told me that I needed to see a counselor with student health services, who when I had my one-hour long session with her, told me that I needed to see a doctor, who when I went back to see, told me that they could not help me and I needed to see a specialist, that I was not able to see until the summer. The news did not inspire hope, and instead inspired more dread for the coming exams.

In the Fall semester of 2017, I was hopeful to have a good year and reclaim my marks. However, in the first week of October I suffered a leg injury. I walked around with a crutch for roughly 2 weeks, and this coupled with falling out of my schedule the semester previous, I was having difficulty regularly attending classes. When I did recover and started attending classes, school was going mostly well, until I fell ill on the weekend of the 29th of November. I spent until the 10th of November with a fever of 42 degrees Celsius, was unable to leave bed, and barely able to comprehend the world around me. On the 10th of November, a friend took me to the hospital and I was told that I had pneumonia, which was exacerbated by other lung conditions. I was prescribed the antibiotic Erythromycin, which caused many side effects, including severe pain, vomiting and defecating blood, and fatigue, which further kept me incapacitated until I recovered on the 19th of November. This time out of class of course negatively effected my studies of that year through missing classes, being unable to work, and through taking me out of my schedule.

My future plan, should my appeal be granted, is to continue with my current degree, spending the upcoming school year retaking the failed courses from the winter semester of 2017. The problems afflicting me in 2017 have all been resolved by this point: my ex-girlfriend is staying away from me for fear of police involvement, and having seen the sleep specialist during the summer, who told that my sleep difficulties were caused from extreme stress, I have been sleeping normally once more, and wear a sleep-tracking device to bed each night. My mental issues have also subsided with the removal of the absolute insanity that occurred in that year. Furthermore, I have developed better strategies for dealing with stress, and have learned that getting help is acceptable, whether from friends or professionals, and often necessary. The most difficult thing for me in the coming year will be to continue and further improve the schedule used in the winter 2018 semester, which brought me much more success than the previous years as shown through marks achieved.
If any clarification or additional information is needed, please contact me by my school E-mail, or by phone at 905-449-1644.