Cassandra Marroccoli should be spending her weekdays with patients, conducting physical exams, diagnosing ailments and prescribing medications under the eye of a supervisor.

The master’s student in York University’s nurse practitioner program was supposed to begin her final semester, an intensive 12-week clinical placement, two weeks ago and was on target to finish in August. She had even enrolled in a prep course for her licensing exams in October.

But those plans are up in the air as a result of a strike by 3,000 York contract faculty, teaching and research assistants that began March 5. Now wrapping up its 10th week, it is threatening to become the longest in the history of a university that has a reputation for tumultuous labour disputes, with five strikes in the last two decades.

That leaves Marroccoli and roughly 25 classmates, who should have started final placements, on hold as the strike drags on with no resolution in sight.

“Everything’s a question mark,” says Marroccoli, 28, of Oakville, who has a part-time position as an IV nurse at a periodontal practice but can’t seek more work hours until she knows the status of her program.

“I don’t know whether I will be graduating, I don’t know if financially I can support myself. I don’t feel supported by anyone.”

About 50,000 York students have been affected by the strike and for many undergraduates it’s the second interruption, coming only three years after the 2015 disruption.

Now they face the prospect of delays across the board — for graduation, internships and other work placements, as well as applications to graduate school or other academic programs.

Students in nursing and other programs with workplace components, from engineering and international development to social work and law, are also at risk of losing opportunities.

The stakes are particularly high for the nurse practitioner group, who say if they can’t start delayed placements in the next couple of weeks, they’re out of luck for a whole year. Their next shot won’t be until the summer of 2019, which means putting off licensing exams and employment.

“We’re caught in the middle and honestly we feel so helpless,” says Adriana Trpevska, a Mississauga mother of two young boys, who is picking up occasional shifts in a nursing home while she waits.

“At this point we don’t know who to turn to,” says Trpevska, 34. “We feel like sitting ducks.”

Among key issues for striking members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903 is job security, including the ability of contract faculty to move into full-time positions.

The impact of the strike on students prompted the Liberal government to try to introduce back-to-work legislation last Monday before the legislature was dissolved for the election campaign. But that move was thwarted by the NDP.

It came just days after a scathing report from William Kaplan, an investigator appointed by the province who concluded that arbitration is the only way to resolve the clash between two sides with “completely different world views” and academic aspirations.

Following the failed effort at back-to-work legislation, York U issued a new offer that expired Thursday. The union rejected it but asked for a chance to meet and present its own revised terms. As of Friday, the university had not agreed to the proposal, said Julian Arend, a vice president of CUPE 3903.

York has repeatedly pushed for arbitration, but the union insists on bargaining.

On Friday, groups representing faculty and students held a news conference demanding York return to the bargaining table, stressing the anxiety and uncertainty the labour strife has caused.

The fallout for students has been a mounting concern for professors like Rose Steele from the faculty of nursing.

“I’ve been at York since 2000 so I’ve lived through four strikes and this is the worst in terms of the impact on our students,” Steele said in an interview. “It’s going to be very hard to catch up.”

The timing has meant interruptions to two semesters. Shortly after it began, the union blamed York administration for creating stress and chaos by not suspending all classes, even though striking instructors teach about 60 per cent of the course work. Many undergraduate classes were cancelled, and in order to attend those still in session students had to cross picket lines. Even more confusing, professors and departments made their own decisions on how to proceed.

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There are typically about 1,200 students from all nursing programs in clinical placements each term, ranging from full-time positions to one day a week and requiring a lot of advance co-ordination and the oversight of York course directors, who are mostly CUPE members, Steele said.

“It’s not that you can just say well, whenever the strike’s over we’ll send the students. It does not work.”

Steele is one of three York professors who crafted an online statement that calls for the school and its academic labour unions to negotiate non-strike clauses in their collective agreements, so that future irreconcilable differences would be settled through binding arbitration.

The statement on the “Concernedprofs” website, signed by more than 225 faculty, has been criticized by many CUPE supporters as being anti-union, but Steele calls it “pro student.”

It argues that labour disruptions have caused “immeasurable” damage to the university and that students who are paying for an education and planning their futures should not be used as “hostages and pawns.”

York has provided options to help undergraduates complete their courses, such as being graded on what work they handed in prior to the strike, or the option of being given a pass or fail for work to date. The school is also providing tuition credits for courses dropped as a result of the strike which can be used for next year.

“We share students’ frustration in this situation,” York president Rhonda Lenton said in an interview Friday.

Convocations are proceeding, she said. “We expect the great majority of those students who are eligible to be able to graduate.”

But CUPE’s Arend warned that without a resolution, there’s a risk of courses being cancelled in the fall because there won’t be professors or teaching assistants to teach them.

“There’s not much we can say to students (except) we are trying to get a settlement done and they (York) are not helping either you or us,” he said.

Amid the uncertainty, Neckishia Rowe of Brampton says she’s having a hard time envisioning her future as a nurse practitioner.

Rowe, 30, earned a nursing degree at Ryerson University, and took a leave of absence from her job at Princess Margaret Hospital to work casual shifts while at York.

“I’ve put my entire life on hold for three years to complete the program,” she says. But now she’s “waiting in limbo.”