Returning compassion and care: Reign’s rewritten story
Reign Dorfschmidt is a proud queer, trans African Nova Scotian—a drag artist of more than a decade, the 2025 Halifax Pride ambassador, and someone who has built their life around creating space for others. This year, they added another title: NSCC graduate.
Reign's path to the Continuing Care program at Ivany Campus wasn't a straight line. After leaving university in their first semester years earlier, they navigated struggles with mental health and addiction. Now sober for more than two years, Reign has rewritten their story and returned to school as a mature student at 31, drawn to a career caring for others—shaped by years spent caring for their grandparents and great-grandmother, who lived with Alzheimer's.
A program and community that meets students where they are
What Reign valued most was how hands-on the program was. As someone who learns by doing rather than just listening, they found the role-playing exercises especially meaningful, building the communication skills needed to connect with people living with different stages of dementia and cognitive abilities.
The honesty found in the program stood out, too. Faculty and classmates shared both the highs and lows of being a continuing care assistant, and Reign connected with the importance of the work — not only for residents and clients, but for their families. For one final project in a course on understanding the dementia journey, Reign wrote and performed a song dedicated to their late great-grandmother, Eliana, accompanied by a friend on guitar.
Reign also accessed a range of supports along the way, from accessibility services in the testing centre to the campus food bank during a difficult stretch, and the Africentric Centre, which opened the year they started. There, Reign received support to get through their program and found a safe space to belong by building community with fellow Black students which meant the world to them.
Receiving the 2SLGBTQ+ Bursary
For Reign, donor-funded awards were the difference between finishing and walking away. The Continuing Care program is intense and condensed, requiring them to step back from work to focus on assignments, tests and full-time study. At one point, they worried finances might force them to drop out.
Reign applied for the 2SLGBTQ+ Bursary as an openly and proudly queer student, learning about it from a fellow student who had received it himself. The financial awards and bursaries they received eased not only money worries, but the toll those worries took on their mental and physical health.
"These bursaries truly help give people a chance. Knowing I had access to financial help gave me hope," Reign shared. "It helped me not to worry where my next meal was coming from or if I had to drop out of my program to just go back to work. It helped me not give up."
Giving back what was given
Through Reign’s resilience and support they received from classmates, faculty, student services and donor-funded student awards, they are now working in their field as a CCA after graduating with honours. “Never in my adult life did I think that I would be saying that,” says Reign, with hopes to one day return to NSCC for the Practical Nursing program.
Reign believes awards like the 2SLGBTQ+ Bursary matter because many students don't have access to family or community support. For them, that help offered a sense of being seen and accepted as a queer student. Today, Reign is ready to give back to the community that held them through every step.
“I am able to give back what was so graciously given to me, and it is my honour to be able to do so,” says Reign. “It means the world to me to show love and care to groups and communities who are underrepresented or see a lack of attention or care.”
NSCC’s 2SLGBTQ+ Bursaries are funded by generous donors to Rapid Response. Learn more about ways to give to the NSCC Foundation, or contact us to discuss how you can support 2SLGBTQ+ students at NSCC:
By phone (toll-free): 1-866-745-7919 | Fax: (902) 491-4828
Email:
To see options for giving online:
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