2025 Winner of the Conquering Cancer Scholarship

Alexander Varady

From Alexander’s story, you learn how resilient he had to be throughout his cancer treatment and how this resilience formed a passion for helping other cancer patients in the future. With Alexander’s persistence and hard work, we know he will accomplish great things in the field of science and in the fight to find a cure for cancer. Congratulations, and we wish him the best of luck!

Read Their Essay Here:

I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer in 2018 when I was in my early 20s. That was one of the most difficult times of my life. I had to do surgery and chemotherapy in a very short time frame, and I was terrified of what was going to happen to me if the treatment were not going to work or be effective. Something that terrorizes me still nowadays is that there is no guarantee that my cancer will not come back as well as I might develop a new one. I think this is why society always expect us, cancer survivors, to be positive and full of energy. It’s like we represent a form of illness that scares everybody and that if we are not positive and full of determination and energy, we remind people how scary life can get sometimes. After my cancer experience, I fell in love with life because I understood how precious life was in the first place. I understood how ugly and unfair it can be and how beautiful it can be. I started to appreciate the little things like enjoying a meal with a significant other or like just being able to walk in a park. Everybody around me noticed this shift of my personality and they were always making comments like “look at you, so full of life and with your chipper personality” this always got me mad because it was like people were expecting me to be like that, like one of those people that go on TV and talk about their experiences of cancer. I remember one time my aunt was watching the price is right and there was a lady dressed up as a fairy saying that she beat cancer 3 times and she was saying that all lively and with enthusiasm. Despite I agree that is an incredible achievement and something you need to be proud of, it did really scare me how she was talking about it in national television and all around her, people were just nodding and clapping. The normals, how I like to call people that were not cursed by these disease, are always expecting us, the cancer survivors, to be positive and full of energy and I think this happens because they need us to be in this way because the reality is that doctors, pharmacists and even oncologist have no idea what cancer is, how it starts and what we can do about it. They are just shooting blanks, hoping that the cancer will die. Even chemotherapy is not a real cancer specific treatment but is more like “let’s destroy everything and hope the cancer will die before the body” I think it’s unfair for society to expect us to be always the warriors and the hero’s because truth to be told, cancer is just unfair and disguisting and people should be strong for us, not vice versa. We need to be saved because life was unfair to us, she was just unfair. This is why I am applying for this scholarship. I am going to become the best scientist in the world, and I will cure every single cancer in the world. Nobody should go through what I went through, and I feel that society cares more about money then human life. I don’t want to sell my cure, I want to donate to humanity because despite life doesn’t believe in my brothers and sisters, the other cancer survivors, I do, and those people also have dreams and hopes and it’s not fair for them to be fighting in hospital beds while everybody else can be outside enjoying life. I will not accept that, and I will reshape the world and prove to life that we are defective, but we matter as much as everybody else. I always wanted somebody to save me during my chemo period and every time I was showing my weakness, people were reprimanding me because I needed to be positive and strong, to be an example for society. In that moment I only needed somebody to take care of me but this did not happen and so I am going to save because nobody saves me. Cancer survivors need somebody that can take care of them, and they can stop being warriors because I will fight for them all.