<p>Waiver Review Committee
Center for Counseling and Transfer
January 10, 2014</p>
<p>To Whom It May Concern:
Hello, I am xxx and I am a first year student at Hudson Valley Community College. I am writing this letter in hopes that my academic suspension is reconsidered and lifted. I have just finished my first semester at HVCC and it has been by far one the hardest yet.
Over the past of two years my life has been unstable and this semester it affected the ability to be the great student that I know I can be. My parents werent able to afford college after I was done with high school; that meant completely relying on financial aid. I attended Medgar Evers College for a semester, I planned to transfer. After the semester was over I searched for schools that were affordable, had a major I had interest in, welcoming environment and fulfilled my needs as a student. </p>
<p>In preparation of the semester I had problems finding housing. Knowing whether or not I would be able to afford it was also one of the problems. I reached out to several coaches from the football team and numerous amounts of my teammates; I was relieved to find housing just in time for the semester with their help. </p>
<p>My father lost his job in the middle of the semester, and with my mother having complications with her surgery, it now became hard to get the rent paid on time. I applied for work study with intentions to help my family but it was too late. The first time being home since leaving in August was November.
2 weeks after i returned home for three weeks, my mom continued to have recurring cases of hypertension and doctors had no clue why after her operation was a year ago. With my mother being sick, financial issues it now became hard to finish off the semester strong and it was also hard to maintain focus.
My first year at HVCC has been by far one of the most challenging and demanding of me as a student.</p>
<p>DarrielD23, I admire your persistence in wanting to stay in school, but there are two things that deeply worry me about your situation.</p>
<p>One is that you are on academic suspension at a community college your very first semester.</p>
<p>The second is that you are placing the blame for your academic difficulties in school squarely on factors that are outside of your control - your father’s unemployment and your mother’s health problems, which sound like they are also somewhat chronic and not able to be resolved with any kind of identifiable fix. What you are saying, therefore, is that the same problems that affected your academic performance still exist.</p>
<p>Moreover, these are actually very common problems that affect many thousands of students, if not tens of thousands of students, who still manage to do a good job of staying on top of their academic work as well as putting themselves through school working on the side. And, dare I say it - please no one take offense - at much more demanding institutions than one with a community college curriculum.</p>
<p>Perhaps you might consider taking at least a whole year off in order to determine whether going back to college is something you both want and have the focus to do, and perhaps in that time you can save enough so that depending on your parents financially is not something that holds you back.</p>
<p>As your letter is written, you have given the committee no way to conclude that there is any reason you will be able to suddenly gather your bearings and fix what’s wrong. You are only in full control of your own actions and reactions to circumstances, and if I were reading this letter, my impression would be that you have taken no identifiable personal responsibility for the state of your own academic performance. </p>
<p>I wish you luck, but it is possible that college might not be for you. At least not this year. Perhaps next year you will be able to be in a place where you can better convince a committee that you have taken control of your prospects, held down a job, amassed a certain amount of savings, and that you have made your circumstances so much different than they are today that there is a reason to give you that second chance.</p>
<p>I’ve served on college readmission committees that review letters like yours, OP, and meow1985 is absolutely on target. Such committees are looking for a change in student circumstances that might lead to a different result than the one that caused the student to leave college. Our rule of thumb was “nothing changes, nothing changes.”</p>