Mrs. Cherie Goderstad, who started a counseling internship at NDA in late January, is no stranger to the Green Bay area schools.  

Goderstad graduated from Preble and then attended UW-Milwaukee, where she  earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Film/Video Production with a second major in Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies. 

“I had wanted to work in the entertainment industry since I was five years old and decided in high school that I wanted to focus on film,” she explained.

“To create something that could bring meaning or a new experience to others” was her motivation for pursuing film study. 

However, after graduation from UWM, she remained in Green Bay rather than moving to California and working in the film industry because she had met her future husband, who was attending NWTC to get his Associates Degree in Digital Media.  

During this time, she worked for several years in different video and advertising agencies. Working as an assistant video producer and project manager in the agency world, she started to realize how toxic that environment was for her. She was, she explained, somehow directed into becoming a project manager when she didn’t want to be, and as the years passed, she started to realize that she had lost much of the meaning in her work.

“ I came to feel burned out working on multi-million dollar projects, always trying to please a client that I did not care about, while also trying to avoid getting on the nerves of my creative team — since, as project manager, your main duty is to make sure work is getting done on time and on budget.  One thing about the real world that you do not learn much about in school is how to work with people who are entirely different from you,” said Goderstad.

What she ended up realizing was that while working as a producer and project manager, she had spent much of her time listening to people and their concerns as part of her job, and that she had in fact enjoyed that part of the position. 

That realization led to a career change–new studies and the present-day role as a counseling intern in Student  Services.  In fact, in one of her classes at Lakeland College she had Ms. Becky Bain, NDA’s college counselor, as her instructor.

Now she does the enjoyable part of her previous job–listening to people and their concerns–primarily with children and teenagers. 

Goderstad’s counseling internship will continue until early to mid-April. Most weeks she will be available to students on Mondays and Tuesdays, but may also be available a few more days in other weeks.

She also works as a daycare teacher and summer program manager for Pilgrim Lutheran Elementary as well as interning with Glenbrook Elementary in Pulaski.  

“The weeks are busy, of course, but lots of fun as well.  I look forward to meeting and working with as many students at NDA as I can during my time here,” she said.