Sushila Gurung, a rising junior in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, was honored by her inclusion on both the fall and the spring UVM Dean's Lists. Her parents, Amrit Gurung and Pushpa Chhetri, are also very proud of her achievements, as most families would be. However, they take additional delight in their daughter's successes because of the extreme challenges Sushila's family has faced.

Sushila is a first-generation college student. Originally from Nepal, her parents spent twenty years in a refugee camp, and Sushila lived in that camp until she was six years old. They immigrated to the US in February of 2012, and Sushila grew up in Burlington and went to Burlington High School. She considered colleges in Connecticut but wanted to stay nearer to her family.   

Her father, Amrit, took a job at UVM as a custodian, so that she and her sister, who also attends UVM, would be able to afford college.

“I took classes and did dual enrollment at CCV in high school, but it's a bit different from UVM because UVM is such a big college. There are a lot of things going on here, a lot of new things to learn." Sushila found her first year at UVM challenging. Her concentration is Nutrition, Sustainability, and Society, and the courses for her major were rigorous.  "It was just hard coming to college and not knowing how to get help or even where things were. But then, in my second semester, I started to know how I could schedule appointments for TA sessions, and now, in my sophomore year, I know what resources to use, like office hours. I would say that office hours were the most helpful."

After beginning her Chemistry 2 course, she considered dropping it and giving up, "I went to talk to my professor. I was like, 'I don't know if I can do this. It's going very fast, and I'm confused." But her professor encouraged her and offered some suggestions on how she could improve her study skills. She decided to try his suggestions, and at the end of the semester, she earned an A+. "I was very proud of myself getting that A+ because I worked really hard."

Now that she's excelling academically at UVM, she's looking forward to her career and plans to pursue a Physician Assistant Certificate after completing her nutrition program. 

Her favorite class so far was Farm to Table: Our Contemporary Food System with Professor Emily Belarmino, "It's fun learning about the food system. I didn't really think about nutrition in that way before. Professor Belarmino's class was so useful. We did lots of outside activities, we wrote articles, and we did interviews. It was very diverse, and I learned a lot of different things."

"Being a first-generation college student makes me motivated. It makes me push myself harder. My parents did not have the opportunity to go to college. We came from Nepal and lived in a refugee camp where there were not a lot of opportunities. There were a lot of things that we could not do. We did have school there, but the teaching style is very different from here. And it was really hard to get into colleges because of money. We weren't even living in a house. We were living in a hut that was built with clay. So, my parents came here to us to give us an opportunity to go to college, and that has motivated me to never give up, even though I wanted to sometimes, because some classes are very hard. But I think about my parents, and I want to make them proud. I want to give them what they couldn't have when they were young."

"I’m here because of my parents and all the sacrifices they made for me. I will forever be grateful to them for everything.”

When asked what advice she would give college freshmen who doubt whether they can handle college, she offers encouragement: "Don't be nervous. Make connections with your teachers because that's very important. I used to be the nervous, shy type of girl, sitting in the back, not talking.  I would tell my 18-year-old self to just go for it. Be confident, try out new things, and don't give up because you're going to get there."