Lysa Young-Bates will lead her fellow graduates from the College of Business Administration as a student marshal during Sunday’s commencement ceremony. The marketing major’s graduation comes after opening a business, starting a family, cross-country moves and years of indecision. (Photo by August Jennewein)
It would be both true and false to say Lysa Young-Bates is emotionally ready to graduate.
On one hand, she’s elated to have fulfilled this longtime dream. On the other, she’s not quite ready to leave the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
This combination has left the marketing major a little raw in recent weeks and conflicted between wanting to sprint to the commencement stage – something she’s been imagining since the mid-1980s – and attempting to savor every undergraduate moment she has left.
Young-Bates has come to know these contradictory feelings well, though. She’s grappled with a peculiar combination of anxiety and excitement since first moving to St. Louis in 2008.
A newlywed at the time, Young-Bates made the move with her husband as he transferred jobs. She was optimistic about the transition but knew it would also mean looking for work in the heart of the Great Recession without a degree and without the network she developed in her past homes of Houston and Chicago.
After a short time searching for opportunities, the former graphic designer and marketing manager said the next step she should take soon became clear – even if she wasn’t ready to make it.
“I realized at that point that completing my degree was really important, but I just didn’t feel like I was at the right time and place to do it,” said Young-Bates, who first started taking classes at Lone Star College in 1995. “I don’t know why I felt that way, so I started scrambling.”
This dilemma led her to an entrepreneurial path, where she started LifeChapters, a one-person design and marketing firm that supported professional photographers and marketers worldwide.
“I knew that there is such a strong design and marketing community in St. Louis, but people weren’t hiring at that time,” Young-Bates said. “So I thought, ‘If I can just focus on something very specific and also have more of a global focus, looking for customers throughout the United States and beyond, that makes sense. I can have more opportunity for success there.’”
LifeChapters started with postproduction activities, particularly photo editing and photo album design, and continued to evolve over the next nine years as Young-Bates began development work for nonprofits.
But even as her business grew, Young-Bates knew that her ultimate goal was to return to school – an ambition that further developed as she became a mother.
“I’m really glad that I started my business,” she said. “In doing that, you realize all of the other factors that go into owning and operating and all of the different hats that you have to wear.
“But then I became a mom, and that changed my trajectory, too. When my daughter got into school, I realized that I’ve had this wish of finishing my degree tucked deep in my heart for such a long time, and now is the time to do it.”
But even after finding the right time, a new set of worries developed. She faced moments of doubt even while making seemingly simple choices – what classes to take, what campus organizations to be involved in.
“Going into business administration was a little scary because I always thought of myself as a creative person,” said Young-Bates, who started her return to school at St. Louis Community College. “But once I got into it, I realized that I actually really love it. It’s been a natural pathway for me.”
Along with learning the foundation of digital marketing and data analytics, Young-Bates’ educational journey was also one of self-discovery. She pushed herself to balance studies, motherhood, work, volunteering and about a dozen campus activities.
“Returning as an older student, my life situation is really different,” she said. “But the experience has been amazing. Doing things that were scary, taking classes that I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be really, really hard,’ have been the classes that I felt helped me grow the most. You come out of those realizing that you have so much more inside of you than you give yourself credit for.”
She’s overcome her initial fears to graduate with an honors certificate, a 4.0 GPA and as a member of multiple honor societies.
During her UMSL tenure, Young-Bates was also recruited as a supplemental instructor for probability and statistics courses and as a teaching assistant for the Social and Digital Media Lab. She will also conclude her undergraduate journey as a student marshal for the College of Business Administration’s commencement ceremony on Sunday.
“For me, I’ve been really appreciative of the foundation UMSL provided,” she said. “I feel like I’m better prepared now to go into a corporate setting and lead conversations and bring more of the foundational understanding for marketing decisions and strategy. I think that is what I wanted to achieve coming back to school, and UMSL has absolutely delivered.”
In preparation for her final semester, Young-Bates dissolved LifeChapters to dedicate time to her 19-credit-hour course load and to further consider her next career move.
While there are still some unknowns in her future, Young-Bates no longer has the fears that previously held her back. For the first time in her adult life, she believes the right timing, proper preparation and a strong network have all aligned.
“Marketers now have so much more that is expected of you,” she said. “You need to know how to write, create visuals that are compelling, understand data, which is the intersection of all these things that I developed over time. It’s the perfect time for me in the way that marketing is changing. It’s really exciting.”
