Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear board of academic appeal, I¿¿m QIYUSHEN SHI /20234936. I¿¿m a first-year international student from Art Sci Faculty at Queens. I¿¿m currently appealing for my CISC 110 class in fall 2020, my instructor is Wendy Powley. I choose this class as an elective class for my first year and I¿¿m going to major in Economic next year.

I had my final grade of 50 in this introductory class. I¿¿m appealing for the credit standing for this class. I had extenuating circumstances during the first semester. I hope the board of appeal grants me the credit standing/ pass for this class. This course has deeply affected my GPA.

This has been the most troubling year of my life, especially in the first semester. It¿¿s both mentally challenging and physical. As an international student that has to study abroad in another country and another time zone. Sleep deprivation and stress have become normal after school started. The stress and doing live classes at another timezone (usually at midnight) have made my mental health extremely vulnerable, pushed it to the edge of a breakdown. I fly back to China around August 31st and was quarantined for 14 days during the first two weeks of the class. The hotel has an extremely poor Wi-Fi connection; it made me can¿¿t get on my onq classes for almost two weeks straight.
After getting back home; I had an accident one day walking with naked feet, I stepped on a wood spike that penetrated my bottom foot skin, stuck inside my foot. It¿¿s was the one of most painful moments of my life. I went to ER room immediately to do the surgery on my foot. The doctor put an anesthetic drug using an inch of the needle through my foot. The pain is unbearable. After the doctor cut open my foot to extract the wood spike, stitches several times to close up I was bleeding all over the hospital surgery bed. It was the worst moment of my life. I couldn¿¿t even stand up for the next couple of weeks, my parents have to help carry me around the house. The pain affects my focus in the class, sat during them with pain made me hard to focus on what happened to the class for weeks. I often woke up at night feel the pain go through my foot. Unfortunately, it¿¿s ER room I don¿¿t have sufficient documents to support it. I only have my mom took the photo of me after I complete the surgery, the bleed on the surgery bed and dumpster are mine sadly. And there¿¿s the doctor¿¿s hand note before he cut my foot open. This made me missed many assignments and heavily influenced my grade.
The second time of the extenuating circumstance is near the exam, it was the end of November and the exam is on December 10th. My left ear starts ringing and I start to lose hearing from that ear. I waited a couple of days to check it out due to there¿¿s much reviewing for the exam to do. However one day my left ear started to causing pain and I couldn¿¿t help it. I went to the hospital did several hearing tests and the result came back bad. I¿¿m losing hearing over time, even right now slowly. The doctor called this Low-Frequency Hearing Loss, and it damaged my left ear so much I could hardly hearing things. I went to fluid infusion immediately for more than a week long. It¿¿s a long-time effect disease and before the exam, there still noise and pain in my ear. I wasted so many times for preparing the exam inside the hospital; it even exhausts me to open my laptop to start coding during the treatment session. I ended up did badly on my final exam. This led to my final grade of 50. For the supporting medical documents, I had the diagnosis from my doctor in China, and the hearing test results. I don¿¿t know if the board of the appeal needs translation for it or not. Please email me if needed. 20qs1@queensu.ca
Dear board of appeal, I restate my hope to make this course a credit standing. I had minimal passing grade and hope the board of appeal understands my extenuating circumstance during the first semester. It¿¿s a hard year for international students to study abroad online; I have to use the VPN to access the school website due to China blocking the western internet. The first-year environment is extremely hard on me. I wish the school can recognize my dedication and strive to finish this course and give me the credit standing I deserved. Hope all the best, stay safe.
QIYUSHEN SHI
20234936