Petition Letter
Associate Deans of Studies,
My name is Kaelyn Hawkins and I am appealing for credit standing in BIOL 102, PHYS 117, CHEM 112, and MATH 121. As a pre-note: I am in the process of collecting documentation from Kingston General Hospital and the Queen¿¿s Student Wellness Services Clinic, but both are taking longer than I expected to process the documentation. I do, however, have a letter from Freeman Woulnough. If it¿¿s possible for this appeal to go forwards with only the letter from Mr. Woolnough, I can provide the other supporting documentation as soon as I receive it. I am waiting on the results from this appeal to determine whether I can be enrolled in BIOL 205 (as I currently don¿¿t meet the prerequisites of a 1.9 GPA in both BIOL 102 and 103 to enter the class), so I do not want the process to be delayed due to waiting for these supporting documents.
As you can see in my transcript I performed poorly in these courses during the fall and/or winter terms, which can be partly attributed to my struggle with mental health in the fall semester. I suffered an extremely low point with my depression and anxiety during the fall term that continued on into the beginning of the winter term. I sought help and tried my very best to improve my grades, which is evident in the fact that my BIOL 102 mark was a D- and my BIOL 103 mark was a B-. Unfortunately, due to my extremely poor performance in first semester, some of my full year course marks were brought down significantly despite my best efforts in the second semester to improve them. My main issue was my extreme lack of motivation, characterized by my inability to get out of bed for days on end, resulting in me missing a large portion of classes. This is evident by my iClicker attendance in PHYS 117, where in first semester I achieved 16. Since you only need to attend 25 classes in a semester to achieve 100, this means that I attended less than 16 of those classes in first semester. However, during the second semester, I attended around 56 of PHYS 117 classes. Although that is still nowhere close to the ideal number of classes I should have attended, it was a huge improvement and can be attributed, in part, to the help I found from a counsellor in my residence, Freeman Woolnough. Mr. Woolnough helped me find possible solutions to deal with my depression and anxiety in relation to school. I will continue to use resources provided both by Queen¿¿s and other professional sources to help me tackle my mental health issues to better myself emotionally and mentally as well as academically in the future.
In addition to the mental health issues I struggled with, I faced a slew of physical health issues throughout the year that also hindered my academic performance. First, I was afflicted with what was initially diagnosed as strep throat, but was discovered to be mono, for 3 weeks during first semester (the dates can be confirmed by my accompanying documentation). I suffered from a high fever, constant shaking and chills, disorientation, weakness, a very sore throat, and migraines for one week, while the sore throat, migraines, and feelings of weakness continued for the duration of the 3-week period. In that first week, however, my symptoms left me physically incapacitated and incapable of leaving my bed. This prevented me from attending any classes that week and the first half of the following week. My symptoms were so severe that when the doctor from the Queen¿¿s clinic called me to inform me that she had made a misdiagnosis and that the test results confirmed that I had mono, I was incapable of walking across the street to the clinic to get a new prescription for medication that would have actually helped me.
Subsequently, in early November of 2017 I went to the emergency room at Kingston General Hospital for concerns regarding a large, very painful lump that had developed overnight. I was told that it was a cyst that had been developing for years unnoticed, but had become infected and blew up to 2 inches in diameter. I was rushed into an emergency surgery where the cyst was drained. The recovery from this left me unable to walk for 3 days because of extreme pain (due to the location of the cyst, which can be found in the supporting documentation). This caused me to miss 2 days of class. About 2 months after I had fully recovered, I visited Dr. Jamieson for a follow-up appointment where I was informed that the surgery had not been completely successful ¿¿ the cyst was reforming. Because of this, I was forced to have a second operation in May of 2018. The timing of both surgeries was around exam time in both first and second semesters. The stress and worry about the surgeries, along with the pain and other complications that accompanied these health problems, had a detrimental effect on my grades, as they took place during the most important time of the school year for students.
The reason why I am not appealing my BIOL 103 mark is because I performed relatively well in the course, considering the circumstances. One of the reasons I succeeded in the class was because I was very interested in the subject and the professors were incredible. I saw the class as kind of a second chance to genuinely enjoy biology, the subject that I had been most interested in going into university. Because of this, I made extra efforts to push through all of the other struggles I was facing with my health (mental and physical) to attend as many BIOL 103 lectures as I possibly could, which made a big difference in my learning and success in the class.
Overall, looking at the improvement in my grades from first to second semester, and even throughout second semester, it is clear that I discovered what worked for me in terms of studying and learning. The help I received from councellors and other resources at Queen¿¿s also helped me improve academically and emotionally. Now that I have found what works for me I firmly believe that I have a strong chance for success in my future academic endeavors by continuing to further improve my studying, note taking, and overall learning abilities. Although physical health issues are something that usually cannot be anticipated or avoided, I have worked hard to reach a good place mentally and am fully prepared to seek help from the countless mental health resources available to me should I need them in the future.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Kaelyn Hawkins
My name is Kaelyn Hawkins and I am appealing for credit standing in BIOL 102, PHYS 117, CHEM 112, and MATH 121. As a pre-note: I am in the process of collecting documentation from Kingston General Hospital and the Queen¿¿s Student Wellness Services Clinic, but both are taking longer than I expected to process the documentation. I do, however, have a letter from Freeman Woulnough. If it¿¿s possible for this appeal to go forwards with only the letter from Mr. Woolnough, I can provide the other supporting documentation as soon as I receive it. I am waiting on the results from this appeal to determine whether I can be enrolled in BIOL 205 (as I currently don¿¿t meet the prerequisites of a 1.9 GPA in both BIOL 102 and 103 to enter the class), so I do not want the process to be delayed due to waiting for these supporting documents.
As you can see in my transcript I performed poorly in these courses during the fall and/or winter terms, which can be partly attributed to my struggle with mental health in the fall semester. I suffered an extremely low point with my depression and anxiety during the fall term that continued on into the beginning of the winter term. I sought help and tried my very best to improve my grades, which is evident in the fact that my BIOL 102 mark was a D- and my BIOL 103 mark was a B-. Unfortunately, due to my extremely poor performance in first semester, some of my full year course marks were brought down significantly despite my best efforts in the second semester to improve them. My main issue was my extreme lack of motivation, characterized by my inability to get out of bed for days on end, resulting in me missing a large portion of classes. This is evident by my iClicker attendance in PHYS 117, where in first semester I achieved 16. Since you only need to attend 25 classes in a semester to achieve 100, this means that I attended less than 16 of those classes in first semester. However, during the second semester, I attended around 56 of PHYS 117 classes. Although that is still nowhere close to the ideal number of classes I should have attended, it was a huge improvement and can be attributed, in part, to the help I found from a counsellor in my residence, Freeman Woolnough. Mr. Woolnough helped me find possible solutions to deal with my depression and anxiety in relation to school. I will continue to use resources provided both by Queen¿¿s and other professional sources to help me tackle my mental health issues to better myself emotionally and mentally as well as academically in the future.
In addition to the mental health issues I struggled with, I faced a slew of physical health issues throughout the year that also hindered my academic performance. First, I was afflicted with what was initially diagnosed as strep throat, but was discovered to be mono, for 3 weeks during first semester (the dates can be confirmed by my accompanying documentation). I suffered from a high fever, constant shaking and chills, disorientation, weakness, a very sore throat, and migraines for one week, while the sore throat, migraines, and feelings of weakness continued for the duration of the 3-week period. In that first week, however, my symptoms left me physically incapacitated and incapable of leaving my bed. This prevented me from attending any classes that week and the first half of the following week. My symptoms were so severe that when the doctor from the Queen¿¿s clinic called me to inform me that she had made a misdiagnosis and that the test results confirmed that I had mono, I was incapable of walking across the street to the clinic to get a new prescription for medication that would have actually helped me.
Subsequently, in early November of 2017 I went to the emergency room at Kingston General Hospital for concerns regarding a large, very painful lump that had developed overnight. I was told that it was a cyst that had been developing for years unnoticed, but had become infected and blew up to 2 inches in diameter. I was rushed into an emergency surgery where the cyst was drained. The recovery from this left me unable to walk for 3 days because of extreme pain (due to the location of the cyst, which can be found in the supporting documentation). This caused me to miss 2 days of class. About 2 months after I had fully recovered, I visited Dr. Jamieson for a follow-up appointment where I was informed that the surgery had not been completely successful ¿¿ the cyst was reforming. Because of this, I was forced to have a second operation in May of 2018. The timing of both surgeries was around exam time in both first and second semesters. The stress and worry about the surgeries, along with the pain and other complications that accompanied these health problems, had a detrimental effect on my grades, as they took place during the most important time of the school year for students.
The reason why I am not appealing my BIOL 103 mark is because I performed relatively well in the course, considering the circumstances. One of the reasons I succeeded in the class was because I was very interested in the subject and the professors were incredible. I saw the class as kind of a second chance to genuinely enjoy biology, the subject that I had been most interested in going into university. Because of this, I made extra efforts to push through all of the other struggles I was facing with my health (mental and physical) to attend as many BIOL 103 lectures as I possibly could, which made a big difference in my learning and success in the class.
Overall, looking at the improvement in my grades from first to second semester, and even throughout second semester, it is clear that I discovered what worked for me in terms of studying and learning. The help I received from councellors and other resources at Queen¿¿s also helped me improve academically and emotionally. Now that I have found what works for me I firmly believe that I have a strong chance for success in my future academic endeavors by continuing to further improve my studying, note taking, and overall learning abilities. Although physical health issues are something that usually cannot be anticipated or avoided, I have worked hard to reach a good place mentally and am fully prepared to seek help from the countless mental health resources available to me should I need them in the future.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Kaelyn Hawkins