Mako knew two things in life:
One, she was going to become a Jaeger pilot.
Two, she was going to be just as good, if not better, than them. She had posters all over her wall of them, drew both the pilots and what they piloted (no matter how messy her drawings turned out to be), and she trained. Every day, she trained.
She knew others noticed. The place was tiny, and everyone knew everyone. What she hadn't expected was one of the visiting pilots, a Russian woman named Sasha, a woman whom she had at least three posters of on her wall, to smile at her and tell her that she was doing great. It was in Russian, but Mako had picked up a number of languages over the years, some better than others.
So she called back out "Thank you!" in the same tongue and then got right back to work. The next time she came back, she wanted to hear even more than that.