Alum
Elizabeth Bernstein
Wall Street Journal columnist
Elizabeth Bernstein, BA'87, Wall Street Journal columnist
"I've always wanted to write since I was a little kid. I looked back, and somewhere I wrote that I wanted to tell stories about real people. Which is exciting for me because that's what I do for a living. So to me, it's really cool to see that all these years out that's what I did.
I just jumped right in and took the classes that I wanted to, that were interesting to me. I immediately got to take all of these writing classes in two different departments. At that time, I really thought I'd go into magazines, and I liked long-form reporting, so I wrote for the alumni magazine.
I write a column about social psychology. And so it's really about all of our personal relationships: friends, family, loved ones, but also sometimes coworkers. So sometimes I'm writing about psychology, like how do we boost our emotional intelligence? How do we calm down our stress response? How do we deal with anything from burnout to desire?
My job, it's still talking to real people. I get to talk to some of the biggest experts in the world on the field of psychology and social psychology and communication and sociology, all the time. So I'm still talking to people about their own relationships.
Bloomington is a creative community, this community of the mind and so many smart, creative people thinking and researching and writing. … I still have very, very good IU friends. We're talking almost 40 years later."
Written By Helen Rummel
Photos By Jordan Venckus