Growing up in Cape Verdian homes, Patricia Andrade and Lisa Gomes said their parents were hard workers, but there was no expectation that they would go to college. When Andrade quit high school and Gomes dropped out of college, no one said a word.

Years later, however, the two have proven that there are always opportunities for second chances.

When she left high school in the 70s, Andrade said, “Coming up my thought was just to be a wife and be a mother. I just didn’t think I could [go to college] in the younger years.”

The Rochester resident bounced from job to job, working in a cotton factory, a thread mill and an insurance company before she decided “the little odd jobs” were going nowhere. With her daughter only two years old, Andrade got her GED in 1972. She went on to become a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and has worked in everything from prisons to an assisted care facility in her almost three decades of nursing.

In the meantime, she raised her own kids as well as her great nephews. When they graduated from high school, she said, “I jumped back into it for myself.”

In her early 60s, Andrade was more likely to be mistaken for a teacher at Cape Cod Community College than as a student, but she was unfazed.

“I was the oldest one in my entire class, in the entire nursing program,” said Andrade, who tested into the sophomore year of the program and graduated with honors last May.

When asked why she chose nursing, Andrade said she’s always enjoyed caring for others.

“I’ve always had that desire to help others,” she said. “I love the medical field.”

Like Andrade, Gomes said she enjoys helping people. Nursing, however, was never on her radar.

“It wasn’t really my plan,” said Gomes.

After “job hopping” for many years, the single mom from Marion was laid off. A friend encouraged Gomes to go back to school, and looking at her pay stubs over the years, she felt a change was in order.

“I just knew that, as a single parent to my son, there was no way I was going to survive and provide the kind of life I wanted to provide for him on thirteen or fourteen dollars an hour,” she said.

At the age of 40, while her son was in the fourth grade, Gomes enrolled in the LPN program at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School. Hitting the books for the first time in more than 20 years was a challenge.

“There were days when I didn’t think I was going to make it, but you tough it out,” she said.

Her son, now a freshman in the Bridgewater State University honors program, was her number one reason for sticking it out through 10 months of homework, tests and late nights.

“My day was get him off to school. I’d go to school. He’d have sports in the afternoon. I’d do dinner, [help with] his homework, then I would finally get to open my books at nine at night,” she said.

“You get to bed at one and you get up and do it all again in five hours.”

Both Gomes and Andrade said family helped them get through the long days. For Andrade, that meant tech support from her kids and grandkids to help her navigate computers.

“I had to learn all the basics,” she said.

One night a paper she was working on disappeared from the screen, so Andrade called her daughter “in the wee hours of the morning.”

She worked her magic and found the file.

“There were great rescues along the way,” Andrade said.

Now graduates, both women are working full-time as nurses.

Andrade is a supervisor at an assisted living facility, while Gomes works with mental health and substance abuse patients at Seven Hills Foundation.

“I thought it would be great to help people,” Gomes said. “When you get that one success story, it’s great.”

Gomes was promoted to a program manager position last spring. She was also employee of the year in 2013.

“They saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself,” said Gomes. “I would say to anyone else, just do it.”

Adrade echoes that statement.

“It’s never to late,” she said. “There is so much help.”

At Cape Cod, she said, “They’re determined not to let you fail. If you fail, it’s on you.”