The University of Guelph-Humber is a place where everyone is welcomed, and anyone can belong. It’s also a university where dreams come true.
Alumni Ruth Oudit (Justice Studies, class of 2024) and Jenny Trang (Justice Studies, class of 2024) are both first-generation university students with immigrant parents who left their home countries in search of better opportunities for their children.
"No dream is too big,” Oudit said, whose parents are immigrants from Guyana. She and her sister Rachel (who’s also a U of GH alum) are the first in their family to attend university as daughters of immigrants – a story many students at U of GH share. Oudit recalls how her family’s background as immigrants inspired her ambitions to pursue higher education because of the sacrifices they made for their children.
Trang said as a first-generation university student, she wanted to make her parents proud. Trang pushed herself to succeed to honour the sacrifices her Chinese parents made when emigrating from Vietnam to Canada to start a brand-new life.
She shared her sense of pride from being involved in the campus community and her academic program, and how she sometimes felt "imposter syndrome" from having experiences and achievements her parents might not have been exposed to.