Featured Videos Former Paperworker Rebounds By Emily Matesic Georgia Pacific isn't the only local paper mill to layoff a significant amount of its workers recently. In July of 2008, NewPage in Kimberly announced it would be shutting down, leaving almost 500 people out of work. The electromechanical technology classroom at Fox Valley Technical College is a lot different than the stock prep department at the NewPage paper mill in Kimberly. That mill is where Tom Zierler spent 29 years worker before losing his job last year. "A little over a year ago when it closed, the job market was pretty much tanked already," Zierler said, "so for a person that worked in the mill like that -- which is basically unskilled outside of the paper industry -- there wasn't a lot of options." Unwilling to work for less than he was making at the mill, Zierler enrolled at the technical college. He's pursuing his degree and is leaning towards working with program logical controllers. "After 29 years in one department it's kind of hard to leave your comfort and to go to a different department and start over, but since I had to start over it's like, might as well try and get into something interesting." Jim Reider is living the same story. He worked at NewPage for almost 30 years, too. A high school dropout, he now hopes to graduate from Fox Valley Tech and work counseling kids with drug and alcohol problems. While losing his job was devastating, Reider says going back to school is helping him fulfill his dreams. "This is going to set me up for the rest of my life, but it's also going to give me the opportunity to do something I've never done before -- and that was graduate and walk, and that's my goal right now," Reider said