Humans of St. Norbert:

“After my dad passed away and I needed to take some time off, I was working in health care. I took a little time off to figure out what I wanted to do next. Being in the restaurant industry for over 20-some years and then going into health care, at that point, I didn’t have a clue what to do next. No clue.

“I found out there was career counseling at St. Norbert. My husband was working here, so I was able to use that service and went in and talked with Mary Ellen Olson. We talked about my personality traits and she said she wanted to find out what my heart’s desire was and what I wanted to do for a living. We went through personality testing and career assessments. We spent a lot of time talking about my previous jobs – what I liked, what I didn’t like – to try to figure out what my next path should be. ‘Should I go back to school? Should I continue working in health care?’ We went through so many things. By the end of that, not only had I really worked through a lot of personal things while on the journey, I had figured out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

“A position came up at Ed’s Coffee Shop in the library that was part-time. I interviewed with Kelly Nass and she was absolutely wonderful. Working there was my comfort space. Coming here at that time of my life and working with Kelly just healed my soul. It did. I feel like I was able to get past a certain point of some grief I was dealing with through that job and with some wonderful people. I did that job for three semesters and then needed to go back to full-time. It wasn’t even six months later that this particular job [office assistant of alumni and parent relations] came up and I applied for it.

“I’ve been here for four years now and feel like I’ve grown professionally. I’ve tried to make this office assistant role as big as I can, stretching some of my tasks and things that I do for my team and the alums that come in. I just feel like I’ve been able to make it my own. I realized that I have to be in a job where I can help people. That’s what I love to do. The career assessment really showed me my strengths. It made all the difference for me. Because when you’re sitting there and trying to figure out what you’re going to do, it’s really scary. I can’t say enough about Mary Ellen and the group in Career and Professional Development and how helpful they were to me.” – Susan Korntved, office assistant of alumni and parent relations