Madison Oliver, Mount View High School

Madison Oliver knows what hard work is.

After school on Mondays, she volunteers and when she’s not volunteering, she’s working as a waitress at Ralph’s Café in Brooks, or as a certified nursing assistant.

In school, at Mount View High School where she’s graduating this year, she’s on the math and art teams, the drama club and National Honor Society.

“You just kind of figure it out,” she said. “It works out.”

Oliver has dyslexia and struggled through middle school trying to figure out why she had trouble with reading. Then COVID-19 happened her freshman year and she was forced to learn online, where she constantly felt like she had to catch up on her classes.

Despite it all, she finished most of her high school courses by junior year, when she spent her time split between Mount View High School and Waldo Technical Center, where she received her CNA credentials.

She was one of 12 high school students in her class and by the time it came to take the CNA test, only four students took it. Oliver was one of three who passed the exam.

She plans to use put her CNA skills to use during a gap year and save up for college.

“I’m worried about debt,” she said. “I think the pandemic messed up a lot of people’s (funds) and I don’t want to go into a substantial amount of debt for something I’m not sure of.”

Mount View High School senior Madison Oliver, seen May 23 in the library of the Thorndike school, has passed her state test to be a certified nursing assistant and hopes to use that skill to earn money during a gap year before attending college to pursue a nursing or other medical degree. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

As one of five siblings, Oliver lives with her father and grandmother, and it would be up to her to pay for college.

With her CNA credentials and job at Ralph’s Café, she plans to save up for college and if all goes as planned, she will use the two years of free college at a two-year school and hopefully transfer to a four-year school to get her degree in nursing.

Becoming a nurse, or a related medical professional, is something she’s wanted to do since the fifth grade. Many of her family members are nurses, too.

“The pandemic solidified it (for me), working as a nurse and having my own stories on how necessary health care workers are and how we don’t have enough of them,” Oliver said. “It pushed me to step up and do it.”

She envisions herself in Maine, where she loves everything about being close to the woods and the coast, and having four seasons. She also feels safe when she thinks about her future, which she started to realize when Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.

“The womanly topics and abortion topics solidified staying in Maine, like how we have reproductive protection,” she said. “And also, I like the community and tight knit-ness, where you know, everyone knows everyone.”