Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Hello, my name is Miles White (20133370) and I am writing to appeal the decision that I must withdraw from Queen??s for a minimum of 1 year and improve academic standing.

The reason I am looking to appeal this decision is because I believe it is due in large part to my ongoing, lifetime struggle with chronic migraines. I would first like to acknowledge that this is my second appeal for withdraw since being at Queen??s, as I successfully appealed last year. In this letter I hope to illustrate why I think this happened, as well as the steps I am currently taking and hope to take in the future to ensure the greatest possibility of my academic success, which I am determined to achieve.

Firstly, I would like to explain my condition throughout my life and at Queen??s, as well as how it specifically affected me this past school year. Ever since I can remember I have gotten migraines. Even before I was officially diagnosed, as a kid I remember my head always hurting and not knowing why. I was officially diagnosed in grade 11 after they had been getting noticeably worse. I found a neurologist that I worked with to figure out a plan for reducing my chronic pain to acute attacks. This was very successful for about 2 years until I came to Queen??s and for the first time in my life was faced with true stress and anxiety. This made them even worse, and I decided to enroll in academic accommodations. Over the following 3 years at Queen??s I severely struggled with academics due to this constant pain and having to juggle personal responsibilities like work and school with the migraine attacks. When talking to a friend of mine once, he put this juggling act perfectly. He said that for most students their full time job was school and everything else was a part time or secondary job, but for me my full time job was managing the migraines, and everything else came secondary. And that is truly how it feels, because without being able to manage the attacks, I am physically unable to do, or even think about, my other responsibilities. The culmination of these three years lead to me being required to withdraw last summer. I was devastated, as I knew what I was capable of and was so frustrated that my condition was holding me back. Fortunately, my appeal was granted, and I was allowed to return this past year. I had a plan and was determined to do everything I could to succeed. Coming out of the summer my pain was in a great place and had seen a massive drop in migraine frequency, my mental health was in a great place, and I was very hopeful of the year to come. The beginning of first semester was great, I felt good and my number of attacks were low. However, they started up again further into the semester. I was assigned a new academic accommodations advisor and communicated with her regularly, as well as spoke with my doctor about adjusting medications and what else I could do to stop this. Unfortunately, the attacks only got worse, and I saw myself once again slipping. I was able to complete specific assessments like exams and tests, but overdue assignments kept building up. I made the sacrifice to do the timed assessments that I could do, while committing to assignments when I could. This trend continued for the rest of the year as I was scrambling to improve my health while completing as many assessments as I could. Most of the poor performance in my classes was due to 0% grades for assignments that I could not submit, instead of poor grades for submitted assignments. I didn??t want to drop any courses throughout the year for a few reasons. Firstly, in the Fall semester, my pain did not get extremely worrying until after the drop date, and I also was dedicated to completing the assessments even if extremely overdue. Secondly, which I can say was a mistake on my end, was fear. I already knew how behind I was on credits for my degree since I had a whole year appealed and did not want to get even further behind and thought I should just complete classes and assessments when I could, not thinking it would take this long. That said I have talked to professors recently that have been extremely helpful and stated they are willing to except these vastly overdue assignments and change my grade on solus, and I am still working to complete those obligations, which I plan to complete in full. Obviously depending on the professor and the assessment this could improve my academic standing in itself.