What Your Student Doesn't Know About College (That a Former Professor Can Tell Them)
Here’s a scenario that plays out in homes across the country every fall: A student who spent years working hard, earning decent grades, and surviving the gauntlet of college admissions finally arrives on campus. They’re excited. They’re ready. They have a perfectly curated dorm room and an impressive collection of highlighters.
And then the first exam hits, and they have absolutely no idea how to study for it.
Not because they’re not smart. Not because they didn’t care. But because nobody ever actually taught them how to do college.
We spend a lot of time in this space talking about how to get students into college. We spend considerably less time preparing them for what happens once they get there. And that gap — between the acceptance letter and actual success — is exactly where a former University of Maryland professor named Jennifer Gershberg decided to plant her flag.
Meet Jennifer Gershberg
Jennifer spent nearly a decade teaching business law at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, winning multiple teaching awards along the way, including the highly coveted Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence. She’s a Cornell grad, a GW Law alum, and someone who clearly could have stayed comfortably in the classroom for the rest of her career.
Instead, she left. On purpose.
What she observed — students more disengaged and distracted than ever, struggling to properly focus, communicate, or study — concerned her deeply enough that she decided she could have greater impact outside her classroom. LinkedInSo she became a campus speaker and course creator, and now she travels the country (and the internet) teaching students the skills nobody thought to give them the first time around.
I recently had Jennifer on the Your College-Bound Kid podcast for Interview 277: How to Excel While in College, and it is the kind of conversation that makes you want to pull your student in from the next room and make them listen on repeat.
The Skills Gap Is Real — and Bigger Than You Think
During our conversation, Jennifer walked through a remarkable range of the things today’s students are simply not equipped to do — and it goes well beyond “I don’t know how to write a thesis statement.” She talked about the value of handwritten notes, the case for reading physical books over screens, how to use study guides effectively, and some genuinely great time management strategies. She also got into something that doesn’t come up nearly enough in college prep conversations: the responsibility that falls on the student to build a real relationship with their professors— not the other way around.
This is not small stuff. In our work with juniors and seniors, we talk constantly about process goals versus outcome goals — focusing on what you can actually control rather than fixating on results you can’t. The skills Jennifer teaches are process goals in their purest form. Not “get an A on the exam” (outcome). But: take handwritten notes, meet with your professor during office hours, start studying before the night before (process). These are learnable. They are controllable. And most students arrive at college having never been explicitly taught any of them.
A Word About Impostor Syndrome
One of my favorite parts of the conversation was when Jennifer addressed impostor syndrome — that nagging inner voice that tells a student they don’t actually belong, that someone is going to figure out they’re a fraud, and that everyone else somehow got a manual they didn’t. She gives students concrete tips for working through it, and we also had a real conversation about how women specifically tend to wrestle with impostor syndrome in ways that are worth naming out loud.
If you have a daughter heading to college, this section of the episode alone is worth the listen.
Jennifer’s Course: The Bootcamp Your Student Didn’t Know They Needed
Jennifer has created a 52-minute self-paced online course that teaches students exactly how to manage their time, avoid procrastination, study efficiently and effectively, reduce test anxiety, and develop meaningful relationships with their professors. It covers, in short, everything your student’s high school probably assumed someone else was teaching them.
Think of it as the orientation your student will probably not get from their actual college orientation. It’s practical, it’s research-informed, and it comes from someone who spent a decade watching what actually works — and what doesn’t — from the front of a very large classroom.
A Note for the Parents in the Room
Jennifer also shares concrete, actionable advice specifically for parents of college-bound students in our interview, which is refreshing. So much college prep content is aimed entirely at students, as if the parents just disappear after move-in day. (They don’t. We all know they don’t.)
If you have a rising senior, an incoming freshman, or even a current college student who is quietly struggling, we’d encourage you to do two things: listen to our conversation at the link below, and point your student toward Jennifer’s course at jgtalks.org. You can also follow her on Instagram at @jgtalksorg for a steady stream of genuinely useful tips.
Your student worked hard to get there. Let’s make sure they’re actually ready to thrive once they do.
🎧 Listen to Interview 277 here:
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