Against the odds: Lauren Tucker’s Tarleton journey comes full circle

BY LINDSEY HUGHES

Art Director

Lauren Tucker is a Tarleton State University student who, despite all of the challenges she’s faced, will be walking the stage this May.

Her college journey has been one that is filled with hills and valleys, and throughout the past six years spent at Tarleton, she has overcome and conquered every challenge and hardship that has come her way.

Tucker majored in communications with a focus in public relations and social engagement and has a minor in psychology. She is already putting the degree that she fought so hard for to amazing use with her new job at Cross Timbers Family Services.

There she gets to use her outgoing and empathetic personality to help those who have survived domestic, sexual or violent crimes, as well as use her communications skills to help with the marketing side of the business.

One of her mentors and professors at Tarleton, Dr. Cessna Winslow, helped her to get her internship with the Communications Department, which carried her into her current job at Cross Timbers.

Dr. Winslow was also a huge supporter of Tucker, both outwardly and silently. Dr. Winslow was both a teacher and academic adviser to Tucker and has recognized her resilience in many ways throughout the classes they have had together.

“We have a nice partnership with Cross Timbers Family Services, and when she came to me about being placed for an internship, I realized she would be a really good fit. She has a very empathetic personality and is very caring. It takes a special person to work there,” Dr. Winslow said.

The path toward where she is now hasn’t always been clear for Tucker, and she had a difficult time choosing where she wanted to be at the beginning of her journey at college.

“I interned at our [veterinarian] who also lived across the street from us, and he graduated from A&M. I was looking at West Texas A&M, I was dead set on going there, and he was like, ‘look at Tarleton, it’s closer to home,’… and I was so against it, but I came and toured and loved the homey feel… It was the best decision of my life,” Tucker said.

Tucker was looking for colleges with the goal in mind of becoming a vet, and after choosing Tarleton, intended to see it through to that destination; however, the Lord had very different plans for her life.

“I came into college as a pre-vet major, and I think before I ever started classes I switched to education. I then switched between education and communications probably three or four times,” Tucker said.

Graduation has been a long time coming for Tucker, and she has had to go through many trials and tribulations to get to where she is now but has gotten up and continued down her path every time she’s been knocked down.

“I struggled really badly with getting into the party scene when I came here,” Tucker said. “I didn’t party in high school, I never went out, so when I got freedom in college, I went a little crazy. I was a freshman in 2019, so Covid happened my freshmen year of college, and I had never done online school. To keep myself motivated was a big struggle. It got to the point where they had put me on academic suspension, so I had to take a semester off and wasn’t allowed to enroll in school anywhere in Texas. It was the most trying time of my life.”

Even through one of the most difficult times in her life, where it was easy to feel like the world was against her, she picked herself up. She used the time to grow her relationship with God and to work on personal growth and has now made the Dean’s List twice.

While her struggles were primarily in her personal life, the impact expanded further into her school life as well. Two of Tucker’s biggest challenges during her time at Tarleton dealt with personal loss, something that was very unfamiliar to her up until that point.

During her third year at college, while working as a teacher in a local preschool, a little boy in her class passed away very unexpectedly. This loss was a detrimental one to everyone involved, and understandably, school took a backseat to grief for quite a while.

Then, in 2023, a very close friend of hers passed away about a week before she would have walked the stage at graduation. Instead of letting the pain steer her away from school again, she stood tall and pushed through.

“Those two losses were really big turning points, the little boy turned me away from school, and I really struggled. The second one helped me to stay on track, knowing that she didn’t get the opportunity to walk the stage; I wanted to be able to do that. She was one of my biggest supporters in school and in my relationship with God,” Tucker said.

Another struggle that she had to learn to not only overcome, but also redefine for herself, was her engrained idea of success.

“I defined success as having a big money-making job, whereas now I work at a nonprofit, but I get to do things that fulfill my heart so much… I would definitely say that my definition of success has changed from going to college to being able to get a job that pays well, but now I’m leaving with these memories, and I get to go home and be happy and enjoy my life and not just be focused on money,” Tucker said.

The unavoidable lows that life throws at everyone hit Tucker hard at especially difficult times in her life; however, the highs that followed every tough time helped to make her college experience one that she wouldn’t change for the world.

Some of her best memories happened with the friends and family that she has met along her walk, from moving in with her best friends during her third year at Tarleton, to meeting her now fiancé, to serving at the college ministry Timber Ridge On Campus (TROC).

Of course, her parents have also cheered her on during the bad and the good and supported her even on the hardest days.

“My parents have been my biggest supporters; whenever I went through all of my school troubles it was really hard. I felt like I let them down in a huge way. But now, getting to celebrate graduation and getting to actually walk the stage has been so awesome to get to celebrate with them,” Tucker said.

Dr. Winslow has also been one of those supporters for her and has expressed how proud of the progress that Tucker has shown throughout the many challenges she has overcome.

“She’s just a good-hearted person, and I’ve been so impressed. I’ve watched her mature from when I first had her in PR, to capstone and internship,” Winslow said. “If I had to describe Lauren in three words, I would say passionate, conscientious and empathetic. She strives for quality work, and she’s the student you want in your classes.”

Not only has Dr. Winslow enjoyed having Tucker in her classes and watching her growth academically and professionally throughout the years, she has also noticed her personal growth, rooted for her to overcome every hardship and celebrated her achievements both internally and outwardly.

Winslow’s biggest piece of advice to Tucker is to stay true to who she is.

“Stay true to yourself, just be you, be passionate, keep striving. Don’t let anything get in your way,” Winslow said. “It’s students like her that make you as a professor proud, she didn’t let her obstacles shut the door, instead she reopened the door… She’s going to go places, and I couldn’t be more proud of her.”

Outside of her blood family, she has made many connections closer to college that have been her support system during her time in Stephenville.

Nic and Johanna Burleson were the pastors at Tucker’s church for her first four years of college and have truly become her family away from home. They have been there throughout all of the hardships that she has faced and have been supportive and uplifting during her greatest times of need.

“They took me under their wings. They have two kids who became like siblings to me and now my fiancé – they are in my wedding, too, and Nic is officiating our wedding. Here in Stephenville, they are my biggest support system… They’ve been some of the biggest influences in my life,” Tucker said.

They have also had some of the biggest impacts on her relationship with God, which has grown immensely since her first days of freshman year, when she was first invited to TROC.

She has been serving in the ministry for the entire six years that she’s been at Tarleton, but there was one night in particular that she had a turning point in her walk with the Lord. She ended up giving her life to Christ, as well as turning her school life around.

“I don’t know what it was that triggered this one night, but I had opened up my Bible to do a Bible study, and there was so much going on in my head… this was in the midst of getting kicked out of school and not knowing where I was going to go. I started praying that God would remove any distractions from my mind, and I sat there for two hours bawling my eyes out,” Tucker said. “I was just thinking, ‘Something has got to change in my life. I’ve got to want better for myself. If I want to be able to graduate, if I want to be able to have a family one day, I’ve got to change something.’”

After wrestling with the difficult battle between dedication to church and her walk with God versus worldly pleasures and the party scenes that college provides, that night was the night that everything began to change for Tucker.

“That was the day that I truly said, ‘I need God in my life,’ and I gave my life to Christ that night,” Tucker said.

Her time spent at Tarleton has been what she describes as “fun, challenging but rewarding.”

Every day, from the ones that presented challenges to the ones that were fulfilling, were days that Tucker woke up and chose to overcome all odds to get to where she is now.

“I had my fun times, and I had my really challenging times. Now, being able to walk the stage, I look back on all of it, and I’m just thankful that I made it here,” Tucker said.

Her journey to graduation ended up looking different than most, but without the longer path that she was sent on, she wouldn’t have met the people or accomplished the things that have gotten her to where she is now, and one of the people she is most grateful for finding is her fiancé, James.

“He’s graduating a year early, I’m graduating a year late, but God put us on the path for a reason,” Tucker said.

College looks different for everyone, and hardships fall upon even the best people, but she truly figured out how to make the best out of every experience and learned through some of the hardest times in her life that leaning on her support and more importantly, on God, can get you through the darkest of days.

“Be proud of where you are; no matter where you are, you always can be and are made for more and for better. Trust in God that he will use your past to create a better future,” Tucker said.

After graduation, Tucker wants to stay in Stephenville with her fiancé, who hopes to work for the Tarleton police department. While she has no “dream” job, Tucker truly hopes that wherever she ends up working in the future, she gets to make an impact on people.

She feels called to be a mom and wants to raise her family in Stephenville, to maybe one day be Tarleton Texans just like she was and forever will be.