A-J Aronstein

A-J Aronstein (he/him) serves as Assistant Vice President of Lifelong Success and is a Senior Advisor to the Provost at Barnard College. He oversees Beyond Barnard, Summer @ Barnard, and Barnard Next — a new program for lifelong learning at the College. Before joining Barnard in 2018, A-J was the inaugural leader of graduate and professional career support at the University of Chicago, where he received a master’s degree in the humanities and taught as a writing instructor. His written work has appeared in the New York Times, Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. A-J was also a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia. A native New Yorker, he now lives in Brooklyn with his wife Gina and son Cameron.

What was your first job?

A few weeks before graduating from the University of Virginia, my parents gave me an ultimatum: get a job or move back  home. So I visited the career center for the first time and started frantically applying for jobs. I wound up as a marketing associate on the sales team at National Journal, a company I had never heard of, in a role for which I had no experience. I learned so much in that first job about how to identify and fill gaps at an organization, how to connect with leaders, and how to navigate the intricacies of life on a professional team.  I still keep in touch with several of the close friends I made in those first two years of my career.

If you could speak to your college self, what advice would you give him?

My first job experience relates to the advice that I offer to many students now: be more thoughtful and intentional than I was in terms of searching for a role. I learned a lot of lessons about resilience and ambition the hard way, but I would never trade that experience. I learned how to identify opportunities for professional development and growth in a space where I didn’t think I could. Many of the skills I acquired on that first job continue to serve me today.