At the Girls Rock Our World summer camp organized by American Corner Debrecen, residents of Debrecen recently met one of the organization’s graduates, Eszter Varga. The young rocket scientist recently spoke to Haon about the most important milestones that have led to his extraordinary success.
Her father was born in Debrecen, she was actually born in Budapest, she wanted to be a writer from the first year of high school, she didn’t like science, and Anna Varga Esther Anna was more interested in literature.
The idea to do this was born out of boredom, since I had a lot of free time as a teenager. Finally, on my mom’s advice, I visited a session at Skool
He remembers. As he used to say, everything went “downhill” from then on: he coded the first game of his life in a couple of days, and from there science began to interest him more and more. “I felt like I had found a new way to be creative,” he added.
This is how he became interested in so-called STEM careers (STEM is an approach to learning and development that integrates the fields of natural sciences, engineering, technology, and mathematics), and then finally decided that he wanted to become an engineer in aerospace and in the world of aviation.
You might think Eszter finally came to the United States after consulting an army of career advisors, but instead she found a key concept almost easily. – While surfing the internet, I found a major I’d never heard of listed in alphabetical order on the Virginia Tech site: aerospace engineering. Based on a two-minute YouTube video, I knew I definitely wanted to spend the rest of my life doing this, so I ended up at Virginia Tech – he remembers the crucial day.
Source: Varga Es
Four years after the fateful decision, and after more than twenty scholarships and awards, he finally received his degree in May, he is participating in an accelerated master’s program, and he is now halfway through. He adds that the road may seem simple when described in this way, but it was full of bumps and challenges. Before and during university, I worked a lot on STEM women’s representation, as well as on program outreach. I wanted to prove that a person can become something they’ve never seen before, he says.
From failure to scholarship
Having never taught school subjects in English before, with the exception of EFL, Eszter felt completely lost even in a first-semester AUC math class.
I failed my first calculus exam, but I managed to come back from it too, with a lot of perseverance and asking for help. By my sophomore year, I had already received a scholarship to do mathematical research on a project of my own. The most memorable thing was when I saw the launch of the rocket I built myself
He remembers.
Source: Eszter Varga Archives
Eszter sees everyone’s life as challenging, but she has had a hard time overcoming most difficulties with perseverance. – Many people think that we “rocket scientists” should be geniuses in our field, but I always smile at this thought, because I know myself and my colleagues. There are no geniuses, there’s no secret behind it all, I just worked hard – he points out through his blog that it’s an essential key to success. He was driven and continues to be driven forward by a sense of responsibility that he was almost the first (if not the first) to make the journey, which has the importance of the message: he does not want a fifteen-year-old girl who – like many – says there is anything he cannot did.
SZD
