Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing to the Faculty's decision that I must withdraw from Queen's University for one year. I will be appealing to drop my failed courses in GRMN 100 and GEOL 106 as well as an Aegrotat for ENGL 100, PHIL 111, and BIO 110 and a credit standing for CLST 103 and GNDR 120.
This past year I was unable to complete partial work in classes, missed extenuating classes as well as being unable to preform at the best of my ability of what I am capable of doing. This was due to a multitude of situations, my mental illness, home life and physical health. I suffer from General Anxiety disorder and Panic Disorder. My anxiety is mainly stress and socially triggered. I receive prescription treatment from my Doctor as well as occasional counseling. The summer prior to joining this school my parents unfortunately separated, causing stress and worry on my part. This created a lot of stress for me in the first term of school, affecting my performance in class and assignments as I tried to juggle both my parents lives with my own school work, personal life, social life and health and getting adjusted to university life. In particular this affected my performance on my PHIL 111 mid-term and my GNDR 120 assignments and attendance. As stress easily overwhelms me this caused me to start to get behind in courses. I would have anxiety bouts where I would not be able to attend lectures due to fear of having a panic attack in class. This also affected my work performance, as I would miss integral information and also participation marks. At this time I was not working to the best of my abilities. My anxiety subsided during the winter break, as I was able to spend time with my family and relax. As the second term started up my anxiety was more controlled and I wanted to start off on the right foot with the new term by joining the student service run P.A.S.S where I got help from an upper year. He helped me organize my schoolwork and learn how to balance life with school. Unfortunately in the beginning of February my stomach ulcer, which I believe was acting up because of the stress earlier on, started to bleed and I was out of school for approximately a month and a half, also missing my weekly meetings with my advisor. I was busy with many doctors appointments where my doctor had prescribed me medication and advised me to relax and just focus on my health and recovery. This health issue also gave me extreme exhaustion so even days where I was feeling better I was too tired to focus and catch up on readings or my missed assignments. This caused me to miss a lot of schoolwork including many of my Bio 103 online quizzes as well as the missed lectures, which I needed to then catch up on. I also missed out on participation marks for tutorials, as I was not able to attend them. This also drastically affected my performance in Geology 106 as the professor does not post any material online and bases all assignments off lectures. I could not get the notes as I did not have any friends in the class and was unable to complete the online assignments or the mid-term. This is also the case for PHIL 111 where my professor based examinations on lectures but did not post material online. I missed 2 Philosophy essays as I had missed the material they were based on. During this absence I also missed two English assignments worth 30 together and my second term participation marks suffered greatly and it was very difficult to catch up on all my courses as they were all piling up with work and new assignments. This again triggered my anxiety and I started to have daily anxiety attacks. This made it very difficult to even leave my room and very hard for me to attend lectures. The anxiety would overwhelm me and I would not be able to pay attention or sit in the lecture for fear of a panic attack. Again I fell behind, missing assignments and lectures because of this and then having more work pile up, cyclically triggering more anxiety. I found it very difficult to focus and work, I was also very tired and exhausted mentally from dealing with all of this. Since I am in first year I was unaware of the multitude of resources available for things such as mental illness and managing it with school, had I known I would have taken advantage of these. I was also unaware of how academically in danger I was of a sanction to withdraw or academic probation, as I received no notification or warning that my GPA was slipping below the acceptable level. I also experience examination anxiety where it is very difficult for me to pay attention to the actual examination, as I am preoccupied with the fear of experiencing a panic attack in the middle of the exam and having to leave. This is due in part to my surroundings, the social aspect of exams and the atmosphere trigger my anxiousness and I cannot preform to my expected level. This whole experience has been really unfortunate for me as I really wanted to excel at this school and did enjoy my classes and Queen's University. However, it has also given me a lot of knowledge on what is expected of me and how to keep on top of school so that I can also maintain and manage my mental illness as well as my home life and social life.

My future plans are to manage my stress more efficiently so that I can keep my anxiety subsided. I plan on taking full advantage of the many resources provided by the student services, including the Be well, Do well seminars outlined to me by an academic advisor. I also plan to have regular meetings with an advisor to ensure I am keeping on top of my work and help me plan out my schoolwork. I will also take advantage of the ability for me to alleviate my exam anxiety through workshops and perhaps specific location changes or time limits when writing the exam. I plan to think out my course load more clearly and not overstretch myself in what I think I can accomplish. I plan to space out my courses providing enough time for each so that I can accomplish all my course work efficiently and on time. I plan to defer declaring my major until next year so that I may retake courses while also taking upper year courses in the field of Classics which is the major I wish to pursue. This will ease my stress of having to make the large decision of declaring a major and allow me to make sure this is the right path for me. This will all hopefully work together to provide me with a strong plan for my future, relieve my major stress issues and allow me to excel academically at this school.