Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean,

I am appealing to drop PSYC100 (Winter 2019). At the beginning of the 2019 year, on January 3rd, I had found my stepfather hanging from the ceiling of the basement in my mother¿¿s and his¿¿ home. My mother was away at the time, and it was I who had to phone the police, cut my step father down from the noose he hung himself with, and, the hardest part, tell my mother that her boyfriend of the past three years, to which she started a new life with, had killed himself. I didn¿¿t expect something like this to affect me so seriously. I believed that I could handle the trauma, and continue my studies. I believed I could return only 3 days after my stepfather¿¿s passing, to school and continue my studies effectively. This has not been the case. Over the past three months I have found it immensely difficult to motivate myself to attend lectures, and study for tests. When I am able to bring myself to attend lectures and study, I often find difficulty in staying focused. Thankfully, I have very supportive professors and TAs willing to help me get through this. My LATN110 and CLST103 professor, Sveva Savelli, was kind enough to suggest and aid me in applying for Academic Consideration that is valid until the end of the semester. With their help, I have been able to push through these hardships and continue to succeed in my classes. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for PSYC100, which has been my biggest struggle of all my classes. After our December exams, I knew this semester had to be the semester I really buckled down and worked hard at improving my grade in PSYC100. That was, of course, before this traumatic event. I often have days where I cannot find the motivation to go to my classes. I miss my PSYC 100 lectures and labs, I find myself unable to complete the homework and I have extreme difficulty being capable of focusing on the readings. The reason for me missing the drop deadline is for two reasons. The first, is not understanding what dropping a course meant in terms of how it would affect my transcript and GPA, and the other reason, is that this was a recommendation from my counselor at Queen¿¿s counselling services. I initially had an appointment with the counselor for January 18th, however that ended up being the same date as my stepfather¿¿s funeral, and was needed to be rescheduled. The rescheduled date for my counselling was February 11th, however it was then that it was rescheduled due to a personal reason of the counselor. I am confident that if my counselling date had of been before the deadline for the course drop, I would have been better informed and advised to drop PSYC100 before the deadline. In order to ensure future success, I intend to continue my counselling meetings, as well as taking more initiative to reach out for the help that Queen¿¿s provides. I intend to make up for my lost credits with online courses over the summer term. I am confident that with proper guidance and counselling, I will be able to overcome the difficulties I have been experiencing over the past three months, and that I will return to the academic standard Queen¿¿s holds beginning at the end of the Winter 2019 semester.


Respectfully,

Nicholas Rodd