Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: 15.01.2015

Dr. Johanne Bénard
Associate Dean, Arts and Science
Student Services, 1st Floor Dunning Hall
94 University Avenue
Queen's University
Kingston, ON Canada
K7L 3N6

Dear Dr. Bernard,

I am writing to appeal to have the course Anatomy 215 dropped from my academic record.

On September 12, 2014, I accidentally walked into a light pole outside of Goodes on campus. I was sober during the event (but inattentive as I talked to a friend) and the force of impact was so strong that I lost balance and had to grab onto the pole in order to avoid falling. I was immediately very confused and lost a lot of my memory regarding certain aspects of the event.

Because of cranial swelling and a constant severe headache, on September 13, I was admitted to the KGH emergency room, and was diagnosed with a concussion. This is not my first; I was a highly-ranked competitive wrestler from Grade 7 to 12. But it was my worst.

Concentrating immediately became a major difficulty for me, especially when it came to reading anything, textbook or online. I had to work in a very dark room and even the light of my computer made any work extremely difficult. The concussion severely affected my ability to work and I found myself overwhelmingly tired all the time; I was directed to sleep as much as I could as part of my recovery to rest my brain and accelerate my recovery.

Unfortunately, on September 22, I blacked out at the top of the outside stairs to my apartment and fell the full length of the stairs. I ended up hitting my head again on the concrete at the bottom, while also severely breaking my wrist. My doctor assumed that the loss of consciousness was directly caused by the concussion the week earlier.

I went directly to La Salle, and I was immediately transferred to Hotel Dieu to treat my broken wrist. At Hotel Dieu I was diagnosed with a second concussion and a distal radius fracture of my left hand. I was given an even stricter protocol to follow for the concussion this time, and was referred to a specialist in case I experienced more problems. As you can imagine, this was about as bad a start to my academic year as I could have experienced.

I was barely able to write any tests and had great difficulty focusing on anything; I could not think clearly. I am in no way implying that I would have aced this course but for the concussion, but I honestly feel I would have gotten a much better result.

All my courses suffered greatly as a result of the concussion, but none more so than Anatomy 215. I found the course enormously demanding due to the huge amount of memorization, especially during the period when I was experiencing the worst of my concussion symptoms.

I am writing this to you today to ask you to consider allowing me to drop this course from my Academic Record.

And please be aware, that on the advice of my doctor, I am cutting back my course-load from 5 to 4, to better accommodate post-concussion syndrome. I am also planning on seeing my doctor again when I am home for Reading Week to assess my recovery.

I understand that this appeal may be a bit on the late side. However, I was delayed by the University Hospital not faxing my medical records to my family doctor in Calgary as they had promised to do. Those arrived well after I returned to Calgary at Christmas; I had to phone them to remind them to submit the forms; they apologized, and said there had been confusion and an error made at the Hospital.

For years I played competitive Tier One soccer and wrestled at the highest level; these sports taught me, for better or worse, to play hurt and/or sick no matter what. That ethos spurred me to try to complete all my courses no matter what. I now understand that was a mistake.

I am attaching the original note from the doctor at Queen's, and one from my most recent visit to my family physician here in Calgary.

Thank you,

Matthea Libman
10091065

P.S. I have never before in my academic life asked for any special consideration. It is not me in any way, and I am not pleased at all to be having to ask now. But I feel I have no choice.