Episode Transcript
010 Cosmina Moisescu
Cosmina Moisescu: [00:00:00] And I'm just gonna put it straightforward. It's very hard because you have to work so much and you have to so much out of your comfort zone that it gets tiring and you just feel that you are never going to recover from these negative emotions and that you're just gonna live this boring life and you know, never do anything interesting. But as long as you're willing to do the change, it is eventually going to happen because you are just gonna get so fed up with all these negative emotions that you are just wake up one day and say, okay, that's too much. I'm gonna change something. And that's when the change is gonna start. And from there, there's no going back. You're just getting better.
Aziz: Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is really my superhero. [00:01:00] That's why it's important for me to. Support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities, perspectives and emotions about this world. In these difficult times in human history, we need to bring the people of the world.
Together. And when we hear women, when we listen to real lives of women from other countries, we connect our cultures without our differences or stereotypes, and we get inspired by their stories to live a better life. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Cosmina Moisescu. Cosmina is an aerospace engineering student at University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania [00:02:00] Cosmina loves fishing, drawing, archery, visiting abandoned places, and spending time with her group of friends and family. Soon Cosmina will join a flight school to begin her private pilot license module.
Mina faced a lot of doubt from people when she first started flying at 16 years old, and the odds were against her success still. She understood that being a pilot is the only thing she wants to do in life. Cosmina, how are you today?
Cosmina Moisescu: I'm doing very good and I'm very happy to be here today.
Aziz: I'm happy to have you here. I'm very curious about you as a person, and I'll begin with this, the detail that you love visiting abandoned places. Tell me more about that. What fascinates you about it? What emotions are there? Do [00:03:00] you go there because you love those extreme sensations, or is it because you want to face your fears and grow as a person or just out of curiosity or how does it go?
Cosmina Moisescu: So it's pretty much a mixture of what you just mentioned, but the first thing that comes to my mind when. Thinking about abandoned places is the adrenaline that just rushes through my body and all of the emotions that come with the, uh, abandoned places. And, uh, just go there and I try to think how it was in the past, and they're just truly fascinating to me.
Aziz: I understand and I love that. And that feeling of adrenaline, is it similar or related to flying?
Cosmina Moisescu: Well, I couldn't say it's. The same as the adrenaline I have when I'm flying because it's a whole different thing. It's a whole different sensation. It's really more extreme, but [00:04:00] I can see it comes pretty close.
Aziz: Thank you. That's really interesting, all the nuances about your personality and perspective. And so to ask for an outside opinion, if your friends could describe your personality, the people who supported you, who know you well, what would they say about you?
Cosmina Moisescu: Well, I like to think that my friends have a pretty good opinion about me, so I'm gonna say they think I'm funny, that I'm supportive of everyone and that I'm pretty energetic, but that I can also get pretty annoying sometimes.
Aziz: What do you mean with that? Do you mean you are so energetic that you demand too much out of them? Or what makes you annoying?
Cosmina Moisescu: I mean, annoying in a pretty good way is just that sometimes, as you said, I'm so energetic that I think I can get pretty tiring to people. But I think that's also something they love about me [00:05:00] because as long as I'm comfortable with them, I just never stop speaking and there's never silence in the room.
So I actually think they kind of like the annoying part of me.
Aziz: Thank you. And as an energetic girl and person, where does that energy come from? Is it from your high metabolism and you are born that way? Or is it because you had experiences that made you think. Life is so precious and short. We should enjoy every moment, take all the actions, go through all the adventures, or what motivates you and gives you that high energy.
Cosmina Moisescu: The fact that, as you said, life is so short, really motivates me to be so energetic and just really try to live my life to the fullest. But it's also the fact that I fuel myself and my. Energy with the energies of the people that I love, because as long as I see that they're happy, it just makes me so, so happy [00:06:00] that I get so excited.
Aziz: I like that. And how is it related to flying as well? Because usually flying is a solitary activity that doesn't involve. Too many people, or are you dreaming of taking all the people you love on flights to, uh, places all over the world, maybe abandoned locations, El Dorados, the Amazon, et cetera, and therefore flying is a way for you to take your loved ones on adventures, or is it just a different part of your personality where you fly alone, but when you're not flying, you want to be around people?
Cosmina Moisescu: So flying is, yes, I could say it's a part of my personality, but I would like to contradict you there because being a pilot is not a solitary activity most of times, especially being a commercial pilot like I want to become because you always have to work with the team, and I'm the kind of person that works[00:07:00] really, really well when there's people, um, around me.
So, That's part of the reason why I think this job is suitable for me. But you know, mainly it's just the passion, the adrenaline, and the fact that, you know, I'm doing something different, especially that there's not so many female pilots around the world.
Aziz: Thank you and the fact that you mentioned doing something different and loving adrenaline, it makes me think that maybe you are a, somehow a thrill seeker. Are you a girl who gets bored easily? Do you love new emotions? You are always seeking the next thrill, or is this not a description of something about your personality?
Cosmina Moisescu: I feel like with this description, you literally read me like you read a book. Um, yes, I am the kind of person that gets bored easily, but not when it comes to people. Just, you you know, when it comes to the activities I'm doing, the looks I have, like [00:08:00] I want to change my hair color, my haircuts, my style, et cetera.
Aziz: Oh, I have so many questions about this, and you as a girl, I want to imagine this. So you wake, wake up in the morning. It's already boring. You want something exciting. How do you find that? Do you create it? Do you wish for other people to like text you and say, oh my God, I found this really cool abandoned place.
Let's go. Or you want something like that? How do you deal with boredom? Especially when it comes to a subject like aerospace engineering, where there is a lot of. Exercises related to sciences that could be boring over time.
Cosmina Moisescu: Well, firstly, when it comes to, um, as you said, my university, the degree I chose for becoming a pilot, I mainly just. Try to think that my main goal is to become a pilot and not [00:09:00] an engineer, so I just try to really get over it and get everything over with so that I can reach my goal faster. But when it comes to just other aspects such as my hair, you know, just.
Screw it. I'm gonna change my hair color. It's not that much of a big deal, it's just something temporary. But when it's related long term, I just try to calm down this, um, obsession of mine with continuous change.
Aziz: Thank you. And are you a girl who doesn't have much anxiety? You don't worry as much about safety because there is this thing that. Especially nowadays that people grew up in such a safe environment. They don't go much out of their comfort zone. Even if they desire new emotions, they're too scared. They worry about all the negative things that can happen.
They stop. They're chasing for the adrenaline by the thoughts of negativity and what [00:10:00] could go wrong, et cetera. So do you have those thoughts but you shut them off? Or your mind is so present in the moment that you don't think about them and you just feel the new emotions and thrill.
Cosmina Moisescu: So if you would've asked this question, um, to my past self, let's say Cosmina from one year ago, she would probably say that she's so full of anxiety and that she's just so afraid of everything. Despite this, um, passion of mine, uh, regarding flying, which is pretty much an extreme activity, but I am, was really anxious about what's gonna happen if I do anything wrong? What, if anything happens to me? But I have somehow, um, to get rid of a part of it. Not fully yet, but I'm really proud of myself because, I've started to overcome some of my fears, and I truly believe that someday I will overcome all of them. [00:11:00] So to conclude this question, I'm not really so anxious anymore, but there are bits of me that are sometimes afraid.
Aziz: That's so interesting. What changed? What about you? Did you do something in specific to get rid of those anxieties or, uh, something happened and then you thought, that's it, I'm done with the limitations. I won't create a prison for myself. I'll enjoy life or. What would a person who deals with anxieties, but they want to live, to have adventures, what can they learn from your evolution so that they can free themselves from those shackles like you are beginning to do?
Cosmina Moisescu: So when it comes to emotional fight I would call them, such as anxiety, depression, so on and so forth. It's not really something you can change overnight. You have to fully dedicate [00:12:00] yourself to become a better person. And I'm just gonna put it straightforward. It's very hard because you have to work so much and you have to so much out of your comfort zone that it gets tiring and you just feel that you are never going to recover from these negative emotions and that you're just gonna live this boring life and you know, never do anything interesting. But as long as you're willing to do the change, it is eventually going to happen because you are just gonna get so fed up with all these negative emotions that you are just wake up one day and say, okay, that's too much. I'm gonna change something. And that's when the change is gonna start. And from there, there's no going back. You're just getting better.
Aziz: I agree 100%. And then to ask you, do you tend to be more fascinated with and interested to have in your circle people who [00:13:00] are thrill chasers who are. Outside of their comfort zone who are pushing things forward so that they inspire you or people who are more shy and reserved and you see their potential and you want to be the inspiration that your satisfaction is to see them grow and evolve because of you.
Cosmina Moisescu: I like to believe that I'm a pretty open-minded person, so. I try to never limit myself to a specific type of people in my friend group or my group in general. I love having people that inspire me to be better you know, maybe go out of my comfort zone because I know they make me a better person. But I also like having, uh, people around me that are shy and not so outgoing.
Um, as much as I love being inspired, I also like inspiring people, so I also love helping people, so it, [00:14:00] it really doesn't matter as long as I get along with them.
Aziz: Thank you. And I'm curious about something which is a lot of people knock on, uh, lifestyles such. The pilot where they say You are Unrooted. You don't have really a home anywhere. You are being a nomad, traveling all over the world, and maybe that's not so psychologically healthy or whatever they might say.
What would be your answer to this? Would you be a pilot forever, all your life and never settle in any place but be going? Country to country, city to city? Or is it a temporary part and phase of your life that you see, and later on you have different thoughts.
Cosmina Moisescu: So, becoming a pilot is the forever part of my life, because the fact that you don't get settled, you don't get ha, you don't get to have a family. Um, Yada yada [00:15:00] is truly a misconception about the pilot life. Yes, it can be the case for so many people, but there are so many pilots that have grown to love this job and to have it for their whole life, and to also have a husband or a wife and kids in the whole family, and also being home with them.
So, , I know that I'm smart and that I will be able to somehow, I don't know, makes the professional part of my life with the family part of my life so that kind of kind of live together in harmony in order for everything to be okay and in order um, for me to, manage to be a pilot forever or until I get old, of course.
Aziz: Thank you, and you spoke about how it's aware and different and unique. To be a female pilot, describe yourself in this way. Like what makes you have this motivation? Are [00:16:00] you a girl who always felt unique and different to everyone? And I know everybody's unique, but I mean like you didn't fit into any culture.
You felt always like an outsider around and therefore you thought, if I am an outsider anyway, let me do what makes me happy and it doesn't matter to me. Because I don't have to follow the script that society tells. Or what about it? Is it like the Balkan culture of women and their strong attitudes that motivated this?
Or are you a mix of so many cultures and countries that you fit everywhere? Or tell me more about this part that creates this drive inside yourself?
Cosmina Moisescu: So I am actually a pretty traditional Person, myself. In the meaning like, I want to get married, I want to have kids. Those are pretty traditional things, especially for the Balkan culture. But as you [00:17:00] said, I never felt like I fit into any group. I always felt like I'm different somehow. And that was until now when I actually found the right people to hang out with and the people that make me feel like I actually am the piece that fits in the puzzle. But what I like about this job is. . I mean, of course this started with my passion for airplanes and my passion for flying, but it's just such a beautiful and fascinating job to me, and I get to travel the world.
I get to break the stereotypes. I get to, I don't know, I feel like I'm also doing something for. Women, because I also want to inspire women to go out of their comfort zone and never listen to anyone because I've been told so many times that just because I'm a girl I cannot be a pilot, which is such a misconception.
It really doesn't matter because [00:18:00] the airplane doesn't know if a girl or a boy is flying it. So, um, as a whole, I just, um, really feel that I don't really fit into any other activity. , like I fit into this one. And that's why I chose this career in the first place. And, um, I also kind of kind of like breaking the stereotypes and I like it when um, go like, whoa, you're a pilot, but you are a girl. You are tiny, you're skinny, whatever.
It's, it's kind of fine actually.
Aziz: Thank you. I love that very very much. And would you describe yourself now as a confident girl? Or this is unrelated to confidence. You're like a prisoner escaping from boredom and from limitations, and that pushes you and it has nothing to do with confidence or what is the thing that motivates you and pushes you forward the most?[00:19:00]
If you say you're confident, what does that mean to you? If you can describe it? If you can say it's escaping from, pain of boredom and limitations, then tell me why. A lot of people might be in similar situations, but they choose to be like zombies where they accept those limits and live a life where they're just doing what others expect them to do and just wait to die.
Cosmina Moisescu: I really cannot say I am a fully confident person because as I said, I am still growing. I'm developing myself so. I'm just not 100% confident at the moment. So that means that I was once not so confident, actually not confident at all. uh, I can say that there are two types of not so confident people.
The ones that choose to get out of this boredom of being unconfident and the ones that just choose to stick [00:20:00] with it forever. If you want to become a pilot , whether you like it or not, you have to get out of your comfort zone and try to be confident. Try to believe in yourself, because to me, that's what being confident is about, believing in myself in my own forces, and believing that I can do anything I want to do as long as I'm passionate about it.
Aziz: Thank you. And as a pilot and a girl that loves abandoned locations do you have a world map? Up with all the locations that are a bit spooky or a bit abandoned or haunted houses and you want to travel as a pilot and then spend your day around those to add more excitement and thrill. Or if not, are there places in this world that you can't wait to see in real life to experience, like, I don't know, it could be Hawaii, it could be Maldives, it could be, Australia. I don't know what's most [00:21:00] interesting for you.
Cosmina Moisescu: Um, being a pilot, yes, comes with many perks when traveling. Um, I don't choose this because I want to go to any location. Because after all, at the end of the day, you can just put yourself a plane ticket and go there without being a pilot and without spending all the money on flight school and without, um, going through all the pain of learning, all that stuff.
But I do have this. Tiny little map that, it's not completely yet with so many abandoned places that I want to visit around the world. To me, it's not the fact that they are spooky. I don't want it to be haunted. It's just that I just go there and I try to leave all the past experiences and, it's Fascinating how they were once thriving and now they are just decaying and rotten. So, um, regarding the other part of the question, um, there are also beautiful places that are not abandoned that I want to visit. [00:22:00] And of course, being a pilot has this perk um, that helps me to visit them much quicker and much.
Aziz: Thank you. You mentioned that it's fascinating that places were thriving and now they're abandoned. What is interesting for you about that? Is there a lesson that you're looking for or something that you relate to life, or why is it interesting specifically for you?
Cosmina Moisescu: Yes, it kind of is something related to life and related to all the experiences we have because, you know, you just go into an abandoned place and you look at it. You look at all those walls that maybe, A while ago had someone's paintings on them, or you look at an empty and decaying desk that maybe once a child used to write his or her homework on, and you just think that these people have so, so many [00:23:00] memories there, and now they're just forgotten and just left abandoned and left to rot. So it's pretty sad, but it's also pretty fascinating to me.
Aziz: Thank you and to understand even more. Now you are going to, Begin getting your license at the same time you are studying aerospace engineering. Why do both instead of focus 100% on becoming a pilot? Is there a benefit that maybe a listener who's still too young doesn't know the path, wishes to become a pilot, and they're like wondering why do you both. If . You don't need the university diploma in order to get your license, what benefits does it open? Is it because of the culture where they say at least have a backup plan, a diploma, or what is the most beneficial thing about it?[00:24:00]
Cosmina Moisescu: So when I was in high school, to be more exact, in ninth grade, uh, that was when I decided I wanted to become a pilot. And at first I thought I was just gonna finish high school. and go straight to a flight school, which soon was, um, interrupted when someone opened my eyes and, uh, told me that it would be better to have a backup plan.
So, yes, going to, uh, this university and studying this degree is pretty much somehow, Of a backup plan in case, God forbid, um, something happens and I cannot be a pilot anymore. And it also will help me a tad bit to upgrade to being a Captain way sooner. , but if it wasn't that I would've just gone straight to the fly school because honestly, being an engineer is not really the thing for me.
I don't know. Studying all this [00:25:00] science, it just gets so boring sometimes. Whereas flying is just always so fascinating and it's what I'm truly inspired about.
Aziz: Thank you, Cosmina. It was such a privilege and honor to listen to you, to understand the way you think, the way you perceive the world to. Share your voice and I wish you success. I wish you celebration of getting that diploma. I wish you all the flights you desire forever and being a wonderful pilot all over the world and living life on your terms.
Thank you for participating in this podcast.
Cosmina Moisescu: Thank you so, so much for having me here today, and thank you so much for believing that I am a true asset for your podcast, which, uh, now that it's mentioned, I really hope that it blows up because, So many women are going to be inspired from all the stories that you [00:26:00] post. And, I'm saying this for all the women that are gonna listen to this, thank you for doing this podcast because sometimes being a girl is pretty difficult and it can be pretty inspiring to hear so many stories.
Thank you once again for having me.
Aziz: You are welcome.
