Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the Associate Dean (Studies),
My name is Bassem Doss and I am submitting an appeal in order to get a credit standing in the following courses: MATH 121, PSYC 100, CHEM 112, PHYS 117 from the Fall/Winter term of 2019. My grades suffered gravely due to an injury that left me out of school for 2 weeks. I broke my left ankle on December 19th, 2018 while home in Mississauga, ON. I ended up at the ER and was subsequently referred to the fracture clinic. I went for the appointment at the clinic on the 21st where I was put in a cast and told to come back in 2 weeks for a checkup. On January 2nd, 2019, my X-Ray revealed that the broken bone had shifted and thus required surgery. The surgery was scheduled on the 9th of January since this was the earliest time the surgeon was available, i.e. 2 days after the start of the winter semester.
Following the surgery, I was in a cast for 10 days and on fairly high doses of pain medication. I returned to Queens on the 19th of January but was required to wear an air cast that was essentially not to touch the ground. I was therefore required to move somewhat minimally and could only get around using crutches. Following this, I had 6 weeks of physiotherapy at the QPTC in order to regain the strength needed to walk normally
These circumstances caused me to fall gravely behind in all 5 of my classes. I reached out to all my professors for assistance, and they did accommodate to a certain degree. However, they could only do so much when it came to moving deadlines around. I decided to stay in these courses because they were all full-year courses and I had already completed half of them in the first semester. By dropping these courses, I would only have 2 courses completed in my first year and would therefore not be eligible to remain in any major.
Even when I got back to school, simply going from class to class was practically impossible due to weather. I was on crutches for some time, so I needed to take cabs to all my lecture halls. When I was in the air-cast, it would take me more than twice as long to get places while walking which meant I still missed lectures and labs because I was just physically unable to get there. By the time I was 70 recovered, I was 6 feet deep in work. I used as much of my reading week as possible to catch but there is only so much that can be done in a week; especially when covering more than a month's worth of material for 5 different courses
This also affected my mental health because I went from being a completely independent person to needing help to get into and out of bed. I went to an occupational therapist to help me understand what I could do, I talked to my don as well to help me manage my stress and schoolwork. However, just when I thought I was close to catching up, more work was added from that week. With all the work I did, I still passed and got into a great major but my GPA is extremely low. I want to pursue graduate studies but, with such a low GPA it will never get high enough to get any further. This is why I am requesting a Credit Standing. I look forward to hearing back from you. Thank you
Regards,
Bassem Doss
SN:20100466