Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

My name is Emma Friedman and my student number is 10194278. I am writing to request academic appeal for my courses ENGL-312 as well as HIST-244. Towards the middle of the winter semester I fell victim to an extremely violent event that continues to pose a tremendous psychological challenge. Because of this event I suffered from a lack of sleep caused by nightmares as well as sleep paralysis. Because of, and on top of these conditions I became notably depressed and had trouble focussing on my studies, as well as academic motivation all together. These past few months I have found it incredibly hard to function at the level I once had. Before this event I have always been a top student. Throughout high school I always made honour roll, and every prior year at Queens university I had made deans list. Academics are something that I take very seriously, especially as I intend on applying to very competitive grad schools that are in the United States. However, a fear of mine now is that because of this life event, my GPA, and therefore my chances of making it in to certain schools I want. In my two other courses I was able to still maintain decent grades in, and while my mental state certainly effected the quality of my work there, my grades are not low enough in those two courses for me to appeal. However, ENGL-312 and HIST-224 both left me with C-level grades. The reason that these were significantly lower is because I prioritized History the least as it was my elective and did not work towards my major. However, the reason my English-312 grade is so low is because besides the exam my whole grade this semester weighed on one essay. On top of these realities I was in a very unstable state during my exam period and preformed poorly because of this. I then had an opportunity upon speaking with some professors about my grades to potentially resubmit some things. That is when my grandfather died and it set me into a deeper state of psychological turmoil. In May I began to attend counselling services to help deal with the extenuating circumstances and set me up for success upon entering my fourth year or undergrad. This is why my application is past the 21-day deadline. It was only when I went to counselling and I expressed academic anxiety did my counsellor inform me of the option to request appeal. Before I started attending counselling I also just was in a horrible mental and psychological state and probably would have been too overwhelmed by this process anyways.

Thank you for your consideration,

Emma Friedman
10194278