Meet Alex Jablonski, Harpur College pre-law advisor
Hopes to build connections with law alumni and students.
Alex Jablonski initially thought he wanted to pursue a doctorate in history, but realized he enjoyed providing students with support through advising.
“Changing my career path was really difficult to go through,” Binghamton University’s pre-law advisor said. “When you fixate on one thing for so long thinking that that’s what you’re going to be doing, it’s hard to see anything else. It’s nice in a way because it ended up informing a lot of things I do as an advisor.”
Jablonski grew up in Commerce, Mich. He received his undergraduate degree from Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where he majored in history. He later came to Binghamton University as a graduate student in hopes of becoming a history professor.
“I pursued my PhD from 2011 to sometime in 2016 or 2017,” Jablonski said. “I did my master’s and several years of archival work for the dissertation then slowly came to the realization that it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Jablonski believes it’s important for students to know why they want to attend graduate school.
“I think it’s a preparatory step for something else,” he said. “If you have a clear sense of what the next step is and how it will apply to your larger goals, that’s a good reason to go. It’s something that you can hold on to in the middle of the program that can help to remind you what you’re trying to do. Otherwise you lose your sense of purpose and get lost in it, which is what happened to me.”
After deciding that graduate school wasn’t for him, Jablonski transitioned to student support work when he began working in the Undergraduate Research Center from 2016-2017 and then as a general academic advisor in 2017. He later became the interim pre-law advisor.
“I became the interim pre-law advisor when the former advisor left,” Jablonski said. “I had never given it any thought at all and I didn’t have any formal education in law. But I was interested in working with students who wanted to go to graduate school—that was a professional aim for me.”
Jablonski became the official pre-law advisor after he spent extensive time training for the position.
“The more training I received in being a pre-law advisor the more I became interested in doing it, not necessarily out of an interest in law, but more out of an interest in pre-law students,” he said. “I’ve gotten familiar and more comfortable with it.”
Jablonski is currently working to develop a stronger relationship with the Binghamton law alumni.
“The law council has a deep interest in our students and developing our pre-law program,” Jablonski said. “They give a lot of money through funding things like the summer internship program and the mock trial team. Individually, some of the members support scholarships or lecture series on campus as well. They’ve wanted a stronger connection between the office and them, so my role is to keep them in the loop and connect them with students because so many of them want to come to campus or want to have students come to their offices. I’m always happy to have help because I’m not a lawyer, so the more I can connect students with a lawyer, the better.”
In the future, Jablonski hopes to build greater connections with the students that he advises. Jablonski takes special interest in reaching out to first-generation college students who may not have as many resources as others.
“We have students on this campus who can’t afford the things that come with being a pre-law (student),” Jablonski said. “Things like LSAT prep books, courses and unpaid internships—not everyone can just take an unpaid internship. Those students need more support to be competitive. A lot of people I work with are very receptive to that and will help me act on it.”