My Story: Richard Brungard

Stories from First-Generation Graduates

My parents were very supportive of my move and very proud, however, they really had no words of advice they could offer me. I was not in a college prep program in high school; it was something I never thought to do. Education was important to my parents, but they did not know how to support me. 

I went to the University of Houston (UH) without having visited the campus because that was something I could not afford. However, I learned to love the campus and the city even though it was a culture shock for me moving from a small town in Central PA to Houston, TX. I was a transfer student and lived in the dorms that first year at UH. Residence Life put me on a floor with only other transfer students, which was a blessing because I made friends quickly; we were all new, excited and somewhat scared.  

I was a Hotel and Restaurant Management major, which I loved, but I struggled in the GenEd courses, especially math and science which I was never strong in. I did not realize that tutoring was something that was available to me, so I did not take advantage of it, and my grades showed. 

I also worked many hours because I needed the money. Fortunately, hotel and restaurant jobs were plentiful in a large city, and those jobs built my undergraduate resume that helped me get a job out of college. Since I was working so many hours, my GPA suffered.  

My study skills were also weak and something I did not know you could learn; I just assumed they were instinctual. I struggled getting through college and graduated with a low GPA. I was very lucky that I was in an applied discipline, and it was a combination of my degree and strong resume that started my career out of college. I wish I had known that there were resources on campus to help me be more successful in my academic goals. This is something I did not learn at home. 

Years later when I decided to go back to graduate school, I knew it would be a struggle because of my low undergraduate GPA. I was accepted on probation into a graduate program. By this point I was older and more mature; I knew I needed stronger study skills and that I would need to develop more of a relationship with my professors to be successful. I graduated with a 3.96 GPA from my graduate program. I wish I had learned what I needed to do to be successful in my undergraduate program and that there were people at the university I could have reached out to.