In August 2024, Cassandra Elie walked into orientation on Northern Essex Community College’s Lawrence Campus without a cane. For most people, that wouldn’t feel remarkable. For Elie, it was everything.
Not long before, she had been in a wheelchair. Then a walker. Then a cane — the product of a slow, painful reclamation of her own body after a routine surgical procedure left her without function from the waist down. She had spent the better part of a year unable to participate in activities that brought her joy, receiving few answers beyond a diagnosis of an unrecognized autoimmune response.
But on that orientation day, she walked in on her own. No aids. No assistance.
“No one’s going to see my setbacks,” she said.
That moment — what Elie calls her “Lifetime movie moment” — captures something essential about who she is: a woman who faces delays, obstacles, and medical uncertainty not with resignation, but with quiet, determined resolve. And it set the tone for everything that would follow in her two years at Northern Essex.
Elie, now a 2026 graduate of Associate in Science in Nursing (ASN) program, always knew healthcare was where she belonged. As an older sister who spent years caring for her siblings, she grew up in the caregiver role. It was never a stretch to imagine herself in scrubs.
She had begun a nursing program at another college in 2021, but life intervened — as it often does. She stepped away. Then, in 2023, something shifted. A combination of family clarity and personal readiness converged, and Elie decided: she was going back, and this time she was doing it for herself.
When she reached out for information on the nursing program, Elie was told there was a two-year waitlist. It would have been easy to see that as another door closing. Instead, she reframed it.
“Time was going to pass regardless,” she said. “So, let’s do something with it.”
Elie enrolled in prerequisite coursework and kept moving forward. In early 2024, while still on the waitlist and still preparing, her body stopped cooperating.
What began as tingling and numbness in her lower extremities progressed rapidly. Within a week of a routine procedure, Elie was wheelchair bound. Specialists were unable to offer much more than a vague diagnosis and a waiting game.
“It was a ‘time will tell’ situation,” she recalled. In the meantime, she watched as nerves in her legs died. Today, she continues to search for answers while breaking into the healthcare industry as a new grad.
Through months of rehabilitation, Elie never stopped advancing– physically or educationally. When her spot in the ASN program opened and orientation arrived in August 2024, she would walk in unaided. She would not lead with her struggle.
Once in the program, Elie didn’t just attend class and go home. She joined the Nursing Club, and on something of a whim, decided to run for president.
“It was never about the leadership,” she said. “But I wanted to help create a space that was supportive for us.”
Her motivation came partly from a recognition of what nursing culture can sometimes look like — and what she hoped it would become. She was well aware of the old saying that “nurses eat their young,” the idea that a hierarchical, cutthroat culture had long defined the profession. It was precisely what she hoped to move away from, both in the club and in her eventual workplace.
What she found in her clinical rotations gave her real hope. Despite the broad age range across her cohort, she found genuine camaraderie.
“There was such an age difference between us all, but that didn’t matter,” she said.
She also credits two NECC professors with shaping her perspective on what it means to prepare students honestly for a demanding profession: Elizabeth Burrows, Nursing Club advisor, and Susan Parsons.
“Professor Parsons was known to be tough,” Elie said. “But she did it all because she knew she was making us better nurses.”
Nursing school, Elie will tell you plainly, is hard. The coursework is relentless. The clinical hours are demanding. The emotional weight of learning to care for people in their most vulnerable moments does not let up.
She got through it with the support of her peers, the guidance of her professors, and a personal affirmation she kept returning to when things felt impossible: “I’ve done so many hard things before. I can do it again.”
In May 2026 as the acting Nursing Club President, Elie delivered an inspirational speech at the 2026 Nursing Pinning Ceremony which served as her reflection on her journey of illness, uncertainty, and a degree she earned on her own terms.
She hopes the next cohort of Northern Essex nursing students carries forward the culture of mutual support and transparency she worked to cultivate. And her advice for anyone considering the nursing path is characteristically straightforward:
“You have to focus on one exam, one day, one clinical at a time. Nursing is extremely difficult. It is not just a career or a job. It is a calling.”
