Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: My name is Zhaoqin Wu, second year international student with a major in Applied Economics. I am writing this letter to appeal for the credit standing instead to Geol 102 Fall 2017 and HLTH 101 Fall 2017, also appeal for the one-term appeal timeline.


Suffering from depression really made me poorly participate in my Fall semester courses of my first year and made me fail to appeal this situation on time. The worst is,that I have not recognized that I am in a heavy depression situation until I came back home then got the diagnosis from a doctor in 30th December 2017. The start of bad feeling came into the first few weeks when I have arrived in Kingston. English speaking environment, Cultural shock, and sudden loneliness all drove me, a student who freshly studies oversea, into a badly homesick that last for almost one year. Firstly, I felt very reluctant to come classes even I was forcing myself to do so, but I generally came and sit there then gained little. The second reaction is, that I was having a temporary bad memories. Studying seemed working less effectively to me, so I have done a unexpected job in my midterm and final of both GEOL102 and HLTH 101. The third reaction is, that I was being dramatic sensitive. I felt being charged by a grim mood, all things in life were judged sad and uncomfortable by me. As a result, I often slept more than 12 hours in my dorms every day to keep away from the reality( I lived in Totter 409, Queen's West Campus). However, during that time I did have tried to make new friends and talked to my don and FaceTime with my parents.But the efforts I put in are only prevented me from quitting study at Queen's, not from the depression situation which I cannot control. Also, because of the language limitation and the depression, I failed to find a local doctor or get touched with Queen's support in that time.


I have recovered much better by when I came back home in late December 2017 then got two weeks hospitalization, with treatments as medicines and mental healing. When I came back to Queen's in the winter term, I felt better to study my courses, these treatments really worked well to me, then I got a much higher academic record for this semester than last term, which proved the first term work is irregular to my academic ability. However, the depression situation was not totally out of my life, I was reluctant to really extend my university life. So I even have no awareness to the academic advisor and the option that I could make an appeal, then I failed to make any appeals related to my personal circumstance in April by the ongoing depression problem (I got the reexamination of the same doctor in May,2018, which showed the depression is not totally cured).


In conclusion, the depression beyond my control really brought me a poor academic result in the beginning of my university life and made me fail to appeal it on time. My second semester academic record showed that I would do much better without the depression. I asked the academic advisor in the beginning of my second year then got her support to still appeal to these two courses for credit standing instead, as the best solution to solve the problem, that I was treated unfairly in academic by circumstances beyond my control. I would like to keep touched with Queen's undergraduate support system, then contact a doctor soon if I find any clues to a new depression will happen on me in the future.