As a Hungarian American child of immigrants, I have always strived to become something more, something bigger than my ancestors. Though I am eternally grateful for the sacrifices that my parents made to come to America, there has always seemed a strong expectation to rise to great heights, though no clear path on how to get there. Every year since my majority, I have planned out the coming twelve months with grand plans and high aspirations, though my expectations have not always become reality. When I first started my American college experience at George Mason University, it was after a thrilling gap year where I was allowed to study and live on scholarship in my parent’s home city of Budapest. My high hopes for a comparably strong and interesting academic program in America were not fulfilled, and I stopped attending class after a mere four months, barely finishing my freshman year. I was still lacking a certain level of maturity at eighteen, one that could carry me through less exciting times with perseverance.<\/p>\n
At nineteen, at loose ends, I worked a year in a local bookshop while considering my options. By the time I had turned twenty, I had decided that my course of action would be to travel Europe while working on organic farms along the way. This would mean that I could be given free room and board, but also learn valuable skills that I could develop further down the road. Two weeks before I finished my job at the bookshop, I met a very interesting Peruvian man who helped me rescue some books from an electric coolant flood. Within a matter of days, we had started dating. Though he was sad that I had to leave on my year long trip, he understood that this was something that I had to do. I traveled for eight months in total, to over a dozen countries. This year is where I feel that I became an adult, where I grew into myself. Between milking cows, digging ponds, learning photography and plowing potato fields, I discovered what kind of passions drove me. I discovered my love for true crime from a criminologist I met in Italy, learned about programming languages from two sister I met in Switzerland, and honed my skills in Computer Science while working in Portugal.<\/p>\n
Since that year, I have achieved many important life events, including eloping with my husband, learning two new languages, learning how to cook, becoming a full time nanny to support my family and renting my first apartment. However, one of my proudest moments has been when I decided to return back to school nearly a decade after having left in frustration. Earning my Associate’s and transferring to Old Dominion University to major in Cybercrime has been a big step for me: leaving such an important milestone unfinished has never felt right. Looking forward, I am anticipating furthering my love for forensic entomology as well delving deeper into cryptography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a Hungarian American child of immigrants, I have always strived to become something more, something bigger than my ancestors. Though I am eternally grateful for the sacrifices that my Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26198,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/lydianyerges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}