Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Kieran Sadler
10010982
January 19th, 2015


I am appealing to drop POLS-280(F), POLS-211(F), POLS-243(F), HIST-222(F) and HIST-250A (F/W) from my 2014-2015 academic course load.

Throughout the past two years, my academic performance has been greatly hampered by an extenuating circumstance regarding the health of a family member.
My mother has a disease called MS. Although the symptoms are severely debilitating to her mobility, they have never been an immediate threat to her life or longevity. However, in November 2012, my mother contracted a bacterial blood infection after vacationing abroad with my father. While not directly related/caused by her pre-existing MS, the infection caused my mothers health to deteriorate drastically, and it was the beginning of an extremely difficult period for my family entailing numerous ambulance rides, and many worried visits to hospitals.
To briefly explain, the infection had my mother hospitalized. The blood infection spread to her heart, where it began to damage to the mitral valve. Identifying this, doctors ordered my mother to receive heart surgery to replace the valve. Additionally, during pre-op for this surgery, an angioplasty found a 90 blocked artery. The surgery was now not only a valve replacement, but a bypass as well.
The surgery, which took place a number of months later on April 30th 2014 , was successful. Following the operation, my mother spent May -July 18th in hospital recovering. However, with the addition of MS, the recovery process for my mother was very difficult. Since her hospital discharge in July 2013, my mother's health has continued to prove unstable.
My siblings and I are very close to my mother, and for my family and I this was a point of uncertainty, and a source of much anxiety.
Throughout the time that my mother's health issue was occurring, I was at Queen's attempting to stay on top of my academics, however at a point, the stress of my home life and the stress of school combined to become too much to handle. I was travelling home more often during the school year, affecting my attendance to lectures and tutorials, and as a result I saw my grades drop.
The last four weeks has been the first extended period of time in the last two years in which my mother's health has stabilized to the extent that it is no longer an imminent health concern to my family.
While nothing makes me happier then this, I must address the fact that my commitment to academics faltered throughout this period.
I am requesting the allowance to drop the five aforementioned courses, with the intention to make up for the dropped units by enrolling in summer 2015 courses, and additional 2015W courses.
I ask that this appeal is granted, so I may refocus my attention to my academics uninhibited by my poor academic record throughout the past two year period.
I care about my future, and I know that my academics are imperative. In that, I do not believe that my academic future should be threatened by circumstances out of my control, such as the circumstance explained above. I will always put the wellbeing of my family first, and I firmly believe there should be no reprimand for that.