A co-op placement at a veterinary clinic set Maddie Keserauskis on a path she’s still joyfully navigating.

Maddie Keserauskis didn’t know exactly where she was going when she signed up for Salem Community High School’s co-op program. She had a direction — animals, veterinary medicine, a love of science rooted in watching her aunt work as a vet tech — but she hadn’t yet found the specific room where all of it would click into place. The co-op program sent her to find it.

She heard about the program her junior year through a friend who was interning at a dental office. Curious enough to apply, she sat down with Katelyn Green, the program’s coordinator, who matched her with Paws Here Veterinary Services in Iuka. From August of her senior year forward, Maddie was standing in on surgeries, reading X-rays, and absorbing the rhythms of a working veterinary clinic — earning dual credit through Kaskaskia Community College in the process.

The pivot happened on an ordinary afternoon. A spay had just wrapped up. The staff invited Maddie to stay and watch a pregnant Chihuahua’s ultrasound — a small dog, carrying one puppy. On the screen, she could see the animal’s entire spine moving as the transducer shifted. But the thing that stopped her was smaller than all of that.

“I saw the little flutter of a heartbeat,” she said. “It was beating so fast.” The heart was the size of a bean. “I was like, wow. I would love to be able to do that for people — show them the little heartbeats of their kids.”

She had walked into that room because she loved animals. She walked out thinking about human sonography. Within months, she was planning to enroll in the radiology technology program at Kaskaskia Community College. The co-op hadn’t just given her experience — it had given her a new question to live inside of.

And the questions have kept coming. Where the original plan pointed toward radiology and imaging, Maddie’s thinking has continued to evolve. She is now considering a path in education or counseling — a turn that makes a particular kind of sense when you look at the full picture of who she is. What she loved about the clinic wasn’t only the science. It was being present for something important. What she loves about working with people — in any setting — is the chance to help them move forward. The specific doorway is still taking shape. The direction has been consistent all along.

Her tennis coach, Abby, gave her a phrase she’s carried everywhere: the last point doesn’t matter, because the next point means everything. Maddie has been playing since her freshman year and made two state runs during her time at Salem Community High School — earning a full scholarship to continue playing at Kaskaskia. But tennis gave her something more durable than a record. “Tennis has given me a very tough mental game,” she said. “In life, you’re gonna make mistakes, and that is on you. Getting down on yourself isn’t gonna work.” She described failure not as something to avoid but as something to metabolize: “Failure is my motivation. If I fail, I want to do better next time.”

That same mental framework showed up in chemistry class. Maddie had always considered herself a B student in science. Then she took Chemistry 2 with Mrs. Kohnen, a new teacher she calls one of the best she’s ever had. At the end of the semester, Maddie told her she never expected to earn an A in a science course. Mrs. Kohnen’s reply has stayed with her: “You are whatever student you put your mind to.” She got the A.

Her mom has been the steadiest voice underneath all of it — the person who said “go” when Maddie pointed toward veterinary medicine, and “I’m on board” when the path shifted toward radiology. “She’s like, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to,” Maddie said. In a family of six kids, her mother manages everything with a quiet, unshakeable devotion. “I don’t know how she does it. She just has the passion to push other people forward, especially her own kids.”

What she’ll carry from Salem Community High School, she said, are the small things that turned out not to be small at all — an administrator stopping her in the hallway to ask how her day was going, Principal Boles and Mr. Wolfe bringing the tennis team into board meetings to honor them publicly. “The teachers make the school,” she said. “And they really do a good job at that.”

Maddie Keserauskis arrived at her senior year with a plan. The plan has changed more than once. What hasn’t changed is the instinct behind it — the pull toward rooms where she can be present for something that matters, and helpful to the people inside them. She’s still finding the right room. But she knows exactly what she’s looking for.