TESS Horton relishes challenges.
"When things have 'clicked' it's when I have been doing a problem and I've been getting so frustrated or upset and not been able to get it," said Ms Horton, who is in the second year of a double degree in maths and science at the University of Newcastle.
"But when you do get it, that feeling is priceless.
"That's when learning happens - when you struggle and can't do it and then it happens, and you get the answer, solve the problem or have that breakthrough idea - that's one of the things I did not realise I would love so much about [this field].
"The nature of the work and how you solve things with maths and science is a reward in itself."
Ms Horton, 20, is one of eight women who has been awarded a Department of Defence Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths scholarship, equal to $10,000 each year for four years. UON has two of the seven other recipients, Mechatronics Engineering (Honours) student Sarah Creasey and Biomedical Science student Odessa Mullin.
Recipients had to show academic excellence and positive attributes such as community leadership and extra-curricular engagement.
"It's a pretty huge scholarship and I never expected I would get it."
Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price said the department wanted to take a leading role in shaping the national STEM agenda and the scholarships - awarded during National Science Week - could help build a more diverse STEM workforce.
"Women currently represent about 16 per cent of Australia's STEM skilled workforce and while this figure is growing, we still have more work to do."
Ms Horton said she was open to all careers, including in defence. As a high school student she learned about the army, navy and airforce.
"I got to uni and started hearing about defence with science and technology and didn't know that was a thing beforehand," she said.
"There are so many amazing projects and real world problems, bio security, artificial intelligence, so many different things I could do."
Ms Horton had always been good at maths and science.
She said boys and girls were equally represented when studying the subjects at Merewether High.
"When I got to university that's when I would walk into my lectures and they were maths and engineering lectures and sometimes I would be one girl out of five in a lecture hall of 100 people," she said.
"It was not a big thing in high school but in uni it was a little bit daunting and you thought 'Oh, there is a huge gender gap'.
"Boys when they're in those sorts of subjects act quite confident even if they don't know what's going on. Girls in general - and myself included - we question ourselves a lot more, and that's a generalisation, but that's what I've felt.
"I really have to catch myself when I doubt my ability and think 'I can do it, it's fine'."
She said she had started to feel more confident and sure of herself in the past year.
"It was when I started getting results back and I was doing just as well as all the boys, if not better, that's when I realised it's a state of mind, it's not reality," she said.
"If it is hard and if I'm struggling with it, I know everyone else is as well."
She said she saw the same ideas in younger students.
"I tutor with the young girls and the first thing they say is 'I'm not very good at maths, I don't know what I'm doing', and they get them all right, so it's very much ingrained from a young age," she said.
"It's a little bit sad, but I think it's getting better, definitely."
Ms Horton said she had a mantra, "don't vote yourself off the island".
She said she hoped to see gender parity in classrooms and workplaces soon.
"The division starts quite young, people make their minds up about STEM quite early. We need to encourage young girls when they're quite young to keep going with it."
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