Ava Peyton grew up wanting to be a vet. That was the plan when she enrolled in the Health Occupations program at OKAW—she figured it would help her learn more about the animal side of medicine. But something unexpected happened.

“I figured out that I actually really like nursing,” she says.

Now a junior at Vandalia, Ava is building toward a career she didn’t see coming, shaped by a family connection, a rigorous schedule, and a willingness to walk into rooms she wasn’t quite prepared for.

The family connection is her cousin Molly, who teaches the CNA program at OKAW. Ava draws a distinction between the two tracks: Health Occupations covers the foundational material, while CNA students earn their license and complete clinicals at long-term care facilities twice a week. Ava’s path runs through Health Occ now, with CNA and the advanced medical program planned for senior year.

Twice a week, she job-shadows at senior living facilities. The first visit was a surprise. She’d had grandparents in similar settings, but being there in a caregiving role was different—seeing how dependent the residents are, and how much the nursing staff carries.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “I guess I never really noticed how much the nurses do for them.”

What she saw was hard. “It’s really sad,” she says. “But the people there are so nice to them, and just seeing that—it really does help them.” The experience clarified something. “It’s more just like learning to help people,” she says. “No matter what, you’re going to help them.”

That pull toward helping others is what holds her steady when she thinks about the difficulty ahead. She knows nursing school is hard. She knows the job carries stress. “But in the end, it’s worth it knowing you’re helping so many people,” she says.

Her teacher, a former nurse, shares real stories from the field—the kind of preparation a textbook can’t offer. And Ava is stacking the academic groundwork to match. As a junior, she’s taking AP Chemistry and AP Pre-Calc. She earned med-term dual credit through OKAW. “I’ve always taken a really hard schedule,” she says. After three years of it, she’s planning an easier senior year—aside from CNA and AMP, which will round out her clinical preparation.

She wants to attend SIUE for her bachelor’s in nursing, partly because she’s thinking about pediatric nursing, and Edwardsville puts her close to St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “I really like Edwardsville,” she says. But she’s practical, too. “If I get a good scholarship somewhere else, I’m gonna take that.”

Outside the classroom, volleyball has become a defining part of her life. She’s played club out of Shelbyville since eighth grade, and the experience has stretched her world in ways she didn’t expect. Teammates come from Sullivan, Decatur, and Strasburg—schools so different in size and culture that just hearing about them reshaped how she sees things. “There’s girls talking about, ‘oh, there are 300 people in my class,’” she says. “And I’m like, that’s crazy to me.” Then there are teammates from Strasburg, with classes of 30. At a tournament in Bloomington, her club drew a team whose players were committed to Big Ten programs. “We’re getting our butts kicked because we’re from little,” she says. But she loved it. “I’ve made so many new friends from other schools. It’s really helped my social skills.”

In her freshman year, she played softball—not because she wanted to, but because her best friend needed players. “If I didn’t play, she wouldn’t have had a team.” Ava had never played in her life. At practice, someone threw a ball while she was facing the other way and broke her nose. She needed surgery. “I was so upset,” she says. But that’s who she is—someone who shows up for the people around her, even when it costs something.

Healthcare runs in the family beyond Molly. Her mom’s first cousin is a nurse practitioner, and all three of that cousin’s daughters are going into the field. Ava’s mom is a teacher at Vandalia Elementary and her dad is with the Illinois State Police. She has a younger brother in eighth grade—“I say little, but he’s bigger than me now.”

When she thinks about the future, she’d move south if she could. Her mom hates the cold, too. But for now, she’s focused on what’s in front of her: finishing a rigorous junior year, earning her CNA, and getting one step closer to the career she discovered by accident—one that turned out to be exactly right.