From Hill Country to Yellowstone: Lizzy Wheat’s story of growth and resilience

BY ANDREW UTTERBACK 

News Editor/Podcast Producer

Blanco, Texas, is a 3.5 square-mile town about halfway between San Antonio and Austin. It’s home to just 2,200 people and is known as one of the “hubs of the Hill Country.”

About 25 minutes outside Blanco is where Lizzy Wheat grew up. 

A 10-mile trail of winding road takes you to her family’s 10-acre property, with their house surrounded by animals, a fishing pond and wooded trails. Those trails take you right up to a spectacular view of the Texas Hill Country and a clear panorama of every star in the sky. 

“I’m a little country mouse, born and raised,” Lizzy said.

She and her siblings were each homeschooled up to their senior year. Starting in sixth grade, she started attending HAAC (Homeschool Arts & Academic Class) days. This co-op allowed her to start getting involved in sports and extracurricular activities, which would eventually lead her to finding her career passion and college major. 

Lizzy did ballet for 10 years, starting at six years old. She had also been in theater classes and plays her whole life, capping off her senior year by playing the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.” 

She decided to join her co-op’s student council, which is where she started to see her career path form. 

“My sophomore year I joined the student council, and they ended up electing me president. I did that for my junior and senior year again, and all four years of high school, I was on the winter formal committee,” she said. “I came to school (Tarleton)  because I love events, but I discovered that love from that committee.” 

Lizzy was in charge of the winter formal planning, and this school dance is what sparked her passion for events. 

“While I was working on the winter formal, the venue (The Gardens of Cranesbury View in New Braunfels, Texas) ended up offering me a job because of how well I did as the head coordinator,” she said. “So I worked there for about two years, my junior and senior year of high school, and coordinated a couple weddings, and I even was on the staff whenever they started offering Airbnb as an amenity at the venue, so that was how I dipped my toe into the hospitality industry as well.” 

This job meant by the time Lizzy started college, she not only had leadership experience from high school, but actual wedding and event planning experience. 

She knew about Tarleton through family friends who attended, and it only took one look at the campus to sell her. 

“I did one campus preview day, and I was like, ‘sign me up, I'm here. There's nowhere else I want to be,’” she said. 

Lizzy came to Tarleton originally as a communications major with a concentration in public relations and social engagement, but after speaking to Austin Lewter, the Texan News Service advisor and journalism professor, she ultimately switched the concentration to travel event and activity management (TEAM). 

Her love for event planning, merged with her love for travel, resulted in a passion for ecotourism. She took a travel and tourism class her sophomore year and was hanging on every word from the professor. 

“It was the most impactful class I've taken, hands down,” she said. “I just learned so much. I took [travel and tourism] hand in hand with event coordination, and those are both classes taught by Dr. Goen, so there's a lot of overlap. I learned so much, and it really opened my eyes to a lot of different avenues.” 

The ecotourism interest that this class created for Lizzy is all with the goal of making a positive impact and leaving a community better than when you found it. 

She learned about how, in addition to tourists, travel writers and bloggers can make an impact on communities by highlighting them. Exposure to struggling areas can bring tourists, which brings money, which can put food on tables, plant trees and help animals. 

In addition to all of her academics, Lizzy got involved right off the bat with extracurriculars. 

She joined Delta Zeta in 2022 and has overseen risk management, served as their formal coordinator, sisterhood chairman and executive officer, and in 2024, was a sweetheart for Kappa Sigma. 

She says her sorority sisters made a profound impact on her right from the start. 

“My sisters are the reason I came out of my shell and left the insecure homeschooler persona behind,” she said. “They welcomed me with open arms…I was a little quirky, and they loved and encouraged me for it.”

Lizzy was also a recruitment counselor for a year, a Panhellenic congresswoman and attended two challenge groups through the Paradigm college ministry. 

In addition to all of this, she has served as a Residential Leader for three years. This is where she says her self-assurance grew. 

“It's it's it's the position that grew me to find my voice and be confident in who I am,” she said. 

She started out in Heritage Hall and now, as a third year, is an RL at Integrity Hall overseeing freshmen. 

The Integrity Residence Hall Director, Madison Horner, said Lizzy is a joy to have on the staff. 

“She brings so much energy and liveliness. She's always willing to participate in anything that we're doing,” Horner said. “If she has any questions, she asks them, her residents really praise her and her communication is really good.”

Horner said she has seen Lizzy grow, even just in the one year she’s known her. 

“The biggest thing that I've noticed from Lizzy is her confidence has grown so much this semester,” Horner said. “She doesn't feel that she needs validation for everything that she's doing and has confidence in the way that she's talking to her residents and interacting with the other RLs on the staff.” 

Horner also said despite having so much on her plate, Lizzy manages all of her responsibilities well.

“I know she has her sorority, and she also does an internship off campus, and she still puts in the effort to show up for her residents and her coworkers,” she said. “I think that says a lot about what she sees as a priority in her life. I really think that this job has helped her grow into herself as a person, and especially with her bubbly personality, I think her residents and her coworkers really appreciate what she brings to the staff and to the building.” 

Lizzy herself said that growth has been a large part of her college experience. Right off the bat, she said a lot of her identity (for better and worse) was tied up in being a homeschool student. 

“I was quickly labeled by people as being weird for being homeschooled. I would get comments made to me like, ‘Oh wow, you talk really well for a homeschooler,’ or, ‘You're really nice for a homeschooler,’” she said. “So it's really hard to detach myself from that. I came in very insecure and just looking to fit in, and I didn't fit in like I did in high school.”

Lizzy said this changed about halfway through her freshman year. 

“I realized that not fitting in was actually what people actually liked about me. It wasn't that I was just like everyone else, but that I actually stood out,” she said. “That got me a good group of friends, and so I think that my biggest growth curve has just been using my originality to my advantage and letting it be the thing that helps me instead of hurts me.”

Lizzy’s advice to new college students stems from this growth, as she tells them to start getting uncomfortable sooner — to constantly push yourself to try new things, take new opportunities and use this time in college to chase hard after your goals. 

“I think that I started really pushing myself to do really uncomfortable things during my junior year, and that's when life got good,” she said. “Now, I need to keep doing things that are just gonna make me uncomfortable.”

She also encourages students to have fun, but also use this time in college as a massive networking opportunity. Lizzy took advantage of that during her time at Tarleton, and has a job lined up right after graduation. 

She'll be working in Yellowstone National Park as a front office assistant, which she said is her favorite place to be. 

She credits this job to her mindset of “Do it.” 

“Do it scared, do it lonely, just do it,” she said. “I've seen so many people cripple under the pressure of, ‘What if I do this thing?’ ‘What if I take this chance and I’m the only person who does it?’ I'm the only person who raises my hand. I'm the only person who volunteers. I'm the only person that does it…my life drastically changed when I started doing things alone, so I'm excited to go and try something new.”

This job in Yellowstone is seasonal, so after this summer wraps up, Lizzy plans to look for jobs in the San Antonio area. 

“I'm starting my job search already for my full-time job,” she said. “I'm looking in the San Antonio area, but I'm open to see what the Lord does. He says ‘send me,’ and I'll go.”

Her message to the world centers around one word: resilience. 

“I have had many, many, many run-ins with a shut door, a very hard, ‘no,’ or a very difficult situation to come back from,” she said. “A lot of the places I landed were a result of tough situations coming as a shock to me. A door slammed in my face, and it was a shock to me. Someone betrayed me, and it completely threw me off.”

Lizzy says that no matter what trials you face, it’s important to always get back up and keep trying, which her friends and family say she does every time, with a smile on her face. 

“I hope that anyone who hears my story understands that there's so much beauty after shut doors,” she said. “The resilience pays off.”