Bazyli is easily most proud of the fact that he was raised in a family with very little money, yet he still managed to go to college without accumulating an unmanageable amount of debt. He’s also very proud of his job, and the fact that he survived his doctoral degree at all. He doesn’t go into much detail about it, but his research, and the fact that he gets to teach and have an impact on the education of others is something he feels a lot of deep, private pride over.

Externally, his accent. Bazyli hasn’t tried hard, but he is very unable to speak without a heavy Polish accent, and it becomes hard to understand when he’s talking quickly or gets excited about something. He typically brushes it off by making jokes about how he’s an unknown Bond villain, but it is something he’s really sensitive about. Baz also stripped his way through his post-graduate education, in a very Magic Mike sense of the word ‘stripped’. It’s not something he freely admits to, and he really does find it embarrassing, but it’s a big part of the reason that he got through school without piling on too much student debt. He quit the day after he defended his doctoral dissertation, and would never do it again.

Polish was Baz’s first language and is the one that he is most comfortable speaking. His family still uses it almost exclusively, as his mother’s English is subpar. His English is fluent and when it’s in writing, quite good – but when he’s speaking, Baz is still prone to the odd mistake or misunderstanding of colloquial language. He knows a bit of conversational German, but would never consider it a skill or even a language he’s familiar with.

Bazyli was raised in a very Catholic home and despite having some crises of faith, he still attends mass regularly, though a lot of it is out of guilt as opposed to a deep connection to his faith. When he feels as if he done something wrong, Baz goes to confession, but it has to be something very, very wrong for him to warrant repentance for any bad behavior. It’s important to him, but he is a very lazy believer, and sometimes views mass attendance as a hindrance or just a reason for him to not sleep until noon every Sunday.

It’s not terrible. Baz is currently a Sociology Professor at the University of Denver, but he doesn’t have tenure and he’s only just starting his third year of teaching, so he’s by no means raking in large wads of money. He does well enough to have purchased a small townhome in downtown Denver, be consistently making more than the minimum payment on both his student loans and his mortgage, and he helps his parents out when they hit a rough spot.

They’re overpowering, or at least that’s how Baz would describe it. His parents have been very insistent on the family staying close and appreciating their Polish heritage as a family, and they all attend mass together on Sundays, and have regular family dinners. Truthfully, they’re just incredibly close. His parents try very hard to be actively involved in the lives of all of their children. He also has five youngers sisters, so their house is typically very full and very, very loud – their Sundays are spent drinking wine, playing board games, and verbally harassing one another. While he make joke about it, Bazyli is incredibly thankful for all of them, no matter how frequently they drive him crazy.