Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dean Stephenson and Associate Members,

First in foremost, I would like to appreciate the opportunity to allow me to explain my situation. I am writing this appeal letter in regard to dropping three courses from the Fall 2021 and Winter 2022 term, past the deadline. Unfortunately, this past year, my family and I have suffered from a series of unfortunate events which consequently hindered my academic performance.

On November 9th I had suffered a medical injury which prevented me from using my dominant writing hand for three weeks. This resulted in keeping up with course notes and concepts difficult as one of my courses, PHYS316, relied heavily on mathematical derivation and simply solving problems numerically. Due to the injury occurring after the deadline to drop had past, I was unable to make the decision then, as I thought I would be able to keep up without having to write, but I was wrong. I was unable to grasp course material and work on anything as I could not use my arm until December again. By that point in the semester, I had missed a lot of learning outcomes and important material.

In January, my grandfather was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Throughout the month of January and February, my grandfather's health declined rapidly, and unfortunately due to a few medical discrepancies in treatment, he passed away. During the week of February 28th, my father had travelled to India to see my grandfather before passing. This was also the first week that classes returned to in person. Due to my father travelling, required me to travel back home every week to look after my mom and take her to her appointments as she has been in chronic condition since last year. My grandfather ended up passing away that weekend and my father returned home at the end of March. During this time, I had reached out to my professors to let them know the situation as I was travelling back and forth from Queen's for a total of 6 hours every week. Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to successfully balance the time for my second semester courses. I had once again missed the date to drop courses as all these events occurred during the last date to drop and we had found out about my grandfather's passing after the date to drop had passed. The timing of events also made it difficult to try to catch up again as examination period was upcoming. Due to the constant travelling, I could not manage the time to keep up with PHYS345 and PHYS372, as well as attend all the classes.

I would appreciate the opportunity to drop these courses as I know they are not an accurate representation of my academic performance. I would greatly appreciate being able to take these courses with the course syllabus. These situations have taught me to be realistic and patient. One of the main misconceptions I had this year was thinking I could handle the weight of the circumstances alongside my academia. I made the error of trying to prioritize multiple things at once. I have learned to be realistic and honest about the most probable outcome of a situation and to limit my priorities appropriately. In future, it will be wise to continue communicating with professors as well as reaching out to academic services in situations where there are unforeseen extenuating circumstances, which will prevent this sort of situation from occurring again.

Thank you once again for your time and consideration.

Best,

Navjeet Veghal (20074183)