Lindsay Gonzalez was torn. Should she go to a four-year university to attempt pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse? Or could Wake Tech help her figure out the best way to reach that dream?

"I have wanted to be a nurse since high school," Gonzalez said. "But no one else in my family is in health care, so I didn't know the best route. I didn't know what questions to ask."

But in the end, the decision was easy, she says, because Wake Tech provided all the answers:

• She could live at home in Fuquay-Varina and have a short commute to campus.
• The college's flexible schedule would allow her to keep working as a waitress while taking classes that could transfer to a four-year institution.
• She could graduate without any student loan debt because of the lower cost of tuition and other expenses.

 "I relied on Wake Tech to get me where I needed to go," she said.

Also, her family has strong Wake Tech ties. Her mother earned an IT degree, and two nephews currently attend the college.

Gonzalez credits an advisor who put together "a game plan" for her studies, making it easy to transfer credits to East Carolina University (ECU). After completing an Associate in Arts degree, she attended ECU and earned a bachelor's degree in nursing in December 2024.

"There's no way you can fail if you have a sheet that tells you, 'Take these classes this semester. Take those classes next semester,'" she said.

Davis Smith, dean of Academic Advising at Wake Tech, said advisors, career coaches and others routinely chart the best course to ensure student success.

"Advisors work with students to carefully craft and update individual academic plans that ensure students take the courses that will best prepare them for their intended major or career field," Smith said.

Southern Wake Campus also "felt like college," Gonzalez says, which helped prepare her to settle in at ECU after her transfer. Unfortunately, she had only one year of in-person classes at Wake Tech before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She spent her second year taking all classes online and never came to campus.

"It was hard. I learn better in person," she said.

Faculty members worked with her and other students to make sure the pandemic didn't derail their educational and career plans, Gonzalez says, recalling an instructor in a science course who pledged to do everything he could for students in the class.

"He said it would be rough but that he would do his best to keep us on track," she said. "It didn't set me back."

Now, with her nursing degree in hand, Gonzalez works in the cardiovascular unit at WakeMed's main hospital in Raleigh. She says she may go back to school one day to become a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant.

"I think I was meant to be there," she said of Wake Tech, "because everything worked out for the best."