Like many students, Rashae Benbow found support and success in Community College of Philadelphia’s (CCP) post baccalaureate accelerated associate degree (PBAD) option in nursing. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Penn State University, Benbow decided to pivot from her original plans to attend medical school to something more aligned with her passions and interests: patient care work through nursing.

“I just like to be more hands-on and more personable with people. I realized [that] it’s the nurses that get [patients] to feel safe and comfortable,” Benbow said. While Benbow recognizes the role and importance of providers in a medical setting, her focus is on making patients feel like they are being taken care of. “For me, that’s just what I find most important in health care is to have patients feel comfortable and want to share things with you.”

Benbow began taking prerequisite courses at the Northeast Regional Center, and she learned from an instructor about CCP’s PBAD program, which graduates nursing students in just 15 months. The program is designed for students who already have a bachelor’s degree in a different discipline.

Shortly after she started the program, her brother unexpectedly passed away. “The instructors were immediately supportive. My entire class was supportive,” Benbow said. Her classmates and instructors provided Rashae with community and help to get her through the program even though she was simultaneously experiencing a traumatic loss. “Throughout the process, even when I felt like this was a lot and wasn’t properly grieving correctly and everything, it just took one conversation with my instructor,” Benbow said. “And they said, ‘it’s okay, we’re here to help you.’”

This support came in all kinds of forms for Benbow. She even had regular study sessions with her classmates to help each other through the preparation for exams and milestones throughout the program.

“Every night, we would just get on Zoom for four hours at a time and just study,” Benbow said. “You didn’t expect somebody else to want to stay up with you that late and study.” Instructors were also always there for students. “I definitely wouldn’t have made it without, you know, their guidance and constant check-ins and having a door open, even if it’s just to say ‘hi’ or, ‘how’s it going?’”

She was also part of CCP’s Achieving the Dream scholarship program, another community that added to her robust support system.

Now that Benbow has completed the PBAD program, she is working at Pennsylvania Hospital as a registered nurse, a role she found through a connection with Daniel Larmour, one of CCP’s nursing instructors in the PBAD program. Benbow is also attending West Chester University to complete her bachelor’s degree in nursing and will eventually pursue a master’s degree to become a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Benbow is so grateful for her time at CCP and equally proud of herself for pushing through the program. She feels especially proud to be able to show her five-year-old son that it’s never too late to go back to school or to start something new in life. “And just, you know, I just feel great that my son was able to see me complete something as an adult,” she said. “He’s like, ‘why? Why do you go to school? You’re a grownup!’ And I’m like, it’s never too late to learn. You always can learn something new.”

This article was originally published here.