Hi, please give me some feedback and pointers for my letter. Thank you
My name is XXXXX and I am pre-pharmacy major at the University of Texas at Tyler. I am writing this letter in hopes to lower my suspension period. In the spring of 2015, I was put on academic suspension for possession of marijuana. The reason why I was in possession of marijuana was for medical reasons. When I was 14 years old, I had a seizure caused by my ongoing migraines. This seizure instilled a fear of death that I did not know I had until the fall of 2014, my first semester of university. During this semester, my migraines had come back stronger than before and with migraines came the memory of my seizure and the decrease of my school grades. With this happening to me, I started looking for a quick but sure fix and found out marijuana could help me with it. I weighed living within the law vs my life and my grades, I chose the latter. During my time using, my condition did get better and my grades did increase. It was during the spring semester that my life drastically changed. As you already know, I was found in possession of marijuana, kicked out of my apartment and put on academic suspended.
After all these events happened, I decided to take a hard look at where I was in my life and how I needed to move forward. Over the course of the following months, I started going to Marijuana Anonymous (MA). Marijuana Anonymous has really been a big help in staying off Marijuana. I never knew that I was addicted until I decided to get help. One of the things I did with the MA organization was to follow their twelve steps to recovery program. Through this program, I learned about how I was hurting me and people around me, and how I meant to be more than just an addict. A big portion of the program were the leaders and the participants of the group. Many of the participants in the groups talked about how it personally affected their lives and how greatly it impacted their current situation. The more I attended the meetings, the more I realized I actually was lucky to have been caught as soon I was. My involvement with marijuana was short, and though it had a significant impact on my life, it was not comparable to how it affected the lives of the people I had met. Through the MA organization, I learned that being in addict is not the end of the world and that I should just move on from that period of my life, and make the best out of my situation. After starting to attend this organization, I went back to school during the summer. What happened with my situation made me rethink what I wanted to do with my future; I knew that I had just damaged my chances of becoming a pharmacist. For a while, I was still set on doing pharmacy, but after thought, I decided that I would switch my major to psychiatry.
The MA organization had a really big impact on what my new major was to be. During the meetings that were held, I found myself helping people with whatever problems they were going through. We would share our experiences and talk about what we were doing to keep ourselves from going back to using. I found myself enjoying the times I spent talking with these people. I always knew I wanted to help people in need with my future job, and that’s what I thought I would be doing with pharmacy, but having these one-on-one conversations pushed me to rethink what I wanted to do and I ended up deciding to do psychiatry. This field deals with people who need people to listen to them and to help them, while simultaneously caring about them. I never realized I spent my time doing this, until someone pointed it out to me. I plan to fully immerse myself in my psychiatry studies. To do this, I will find people that are going in same field as I am, which is the medical field. With these people, I hope we will help each other to achieve our goals, stay on top of our school work, while still participating in school activities. I will also continue to go to MA meetings to keep getting help staying sober and also, providing help to people like me. I also plan on using regular medicine to help me with my headaches. I have to take the load of my mind with just a short study break and going back to study, which greatly decreased the frequency of my headaches.
Though the consequences of my problem were this suspension, I have decided to look at the positive side of it, and I have found that the positive outweighed the negative. I believe that the changes I have incorporated in my life will lead me to academic and life success. I hope it’s not too late to be considered a patriot and have this suspension shortened. Thank you for your consideration