Laura Kaczmarczyk & Ian Buckley, Writing Center Couple Alumni Profile

2/9/25 Interview with UIC Writing Center Tutor ’17 alumni, Laura Kaczmarczyk & Ian Buckley

Year of graduation and major/s/minors at UIC:

Laura—May 2017 BA in Psychology with minors in History & Sociology; Master’s in the Art of Teaching History, 2021

Ian—August 2017 BA in Teaching of English; enrolled last January in UIC MBA program, expected graduation 2026

What term did you take 222, with whom, and what years did you work as staff tutor?

Laura—took 222 F 2015 with Kim; staff tutor 2015-17; in grad school returned as supervisor  2019—2021

Ian—took 222 F 2015 with Vainis; staff tutor Spring- Fall 2016

Current jobs:

Laura: Honors Academic advisor and director of the Burnham Hall Tutoring Center at UIC

Ian: ​Graduate Program Coordinator for the Department of Philosophy and MBA student at UIC

What are you both doing these days for work?

Laura:

I am an Honors academic advisor in the Honors College at UIC. I just finished two years there a couple days ago. That means that most of what I do is advising, but then I also do a lot of other things, and that’s a long list. So I run the Burnham Hall Tutoring Center. I teach multiple classes. I also help organize things like the scholarships for the Honors students and transfer Continuing Orientation. What else? Help with organizing events as well.

in the fall, I teach the freshmen seminar courses for Honors students called Honors 101, and that replaces things like LAS 110 or Dialogue 120 that students could opt out of. And then, in the spring, I teach a course to help prepare TAs to help us in that teaching position. And I also teach a different course that I’ve created about William Morris.

I get to use my degrees. It’s rare for humanities graduates.

Ian:

So I’m currently the Graduate Program Coordinator for the Philosophy Department at UIC, and that’s like support for graduate students as well as faculty in the Philosophy department, and then just kind of general admin. It’s one of those for where the “everything else” category of the job description is the bulk of the work. But yeah, I like it a lot though. I really like the faculty. And I’m not just saying this in case, somehow they see this post. But no, I like the faculty. I like the grad students a lot, and I love working at UIC in general, so I’m like, happy to be here. And I’m also happy because I can pursue my degree now I’m doing an MBA, which I initially just kind of thought was prudent to do as like a future opportunity for career growth. But actually I was afraid it would be very dry, but I’m enjoying it a lot, and finding classes that I enjoyed that I wouldn’t have expected to.

Favorite aspects of your work? Challenges?

Ian:

So favorite things for me—this is kind of personal and not directly related to my work—but in doing my program and being a part of the Philosophy department, it’s been really nice, especially post-COVID, when everyone was very isolated, just connecting with people again. I feel like I’ve made more friends and connections in the past couple of years, doing this program and working for the Philosophy Department, than I’ve had since high school or undergrad.

Which feels really nice, especially because from 2021 through 2022, I would maybe talk to, like, the same three people, If that, for a really long time. So it’s been a great opportunity to work with people, professionally, and just developing personal connections.

Biggest challenge for me—the balance has been very manageable, And I think that’s just because I have very understanding managers and the people I work with know I’m working on a degree so they’ve been totally flexible with, like, class schedule. So I’m not bragging with saying that’s hasn’t been challenging, because it has, but yeah, that they’ve been super understanding. I think, for me, as a former English major, and someone who worked in the Writing Center, I’m kind of fitting in the quantitative side of my brain into what I’m doing now, which has been lying dormant for years, assuming it was ever active before now. So I’m embracing that and learning to embrace it, but that’s been a bit of a developing skill set.

[This new quantitative piece applies] just in the business school, though, I’d like to take on more accounting type things now, because, weirdly, accounting is one field that clicked with me for some reason, just because it’s so structured and ordered, I really enjoyed it. But yeah, no, it’s mostly business school with, like, accounting, finance, operations management, which is a lot of number work that I was not really doing before.

You were saying that operations management was actually a surprisingly favorite class.

Yeah, I took that and instantly was smitten. It’s one that, I was warned is not necessarily boring, but certainly a tricky class. And it wasn’t like a prodigy or anything, but I really liked it. it scratched the same itch as some video games I play, like strategy video games, of figuring out efficiency and looking at processes and finding how best to improve them and remove bottlenecks—that itch to make things efficient opened the way for the more math and quantitative reasoning that’s needed.

Laura:

I think my favorite thing is that every day can be very different from the next, because there’s so much variety built in. It definitely does not feel boring. And I had kind of the millennial thing of every year, I basically have a different job between 2021 until like 2023 or even before that, this is the longest job I’ve ever had that I’ve wanted to be at, and yet it feels like the least amount of time I’ve spent on a job because it’s just so engaging and dynamic every day. So I always feel grateful to have that chance to explore different sides of things that I’m interested in or enjoy doing because they fit really well with the job.

The challenging thing, I think, is that as an advisor, and that being my primary role, I hear a lot of things from students that sometimes I’m not actually ready to tackle that might be better suited for someone like a counselor. And even though I have a Psych Bachelor’s degree, I definitely don’t have one in counseling. So there are definitely days where I just can’t help the way that I wish I could for students who are going through really difficult situations. So that’s definitely the most challenging part, and one that I’m still working to get better at.

When I train the tutors for the Burnham Hall Tutoring Center, I always prepare them that even though they’re just tutoring, or as crass as that might sound, the role of a tutor can sometimes bleed into just someone who gets to hear someone else’s troubles. And I definitely want to make sure that the tutors don’t feel like they have to get ready for those kind of conversations, but just be prepared that someone might tell them something that they’re not ready to hear.

If you have a new idea for a class, do you have the chance to propose it?

Yes, which is really always exciting, knowing that if I think of something and I really want to pursue it, I have a place where I can do that. However, at the moment, I feel good with the amount of classes I teach. I think the summer time can be a little bit more open to these kind of other projects. So maybe one day, if I were to add any other teaching options, it would be to teach a summer class, an online or hybrid summer course, because I think that would be something that students are looking into, and it would make the summer kind of feel more than just waiting for orientations, because that’s the main part of advising over the summer.

How did you get there from undergrad–what can you tell us about that path? Any challenges/struggles//twists along the way and how did you overcome those?

Ian:

I had a kind of an interesting trajectory. I always question the wisdom of having an 18 year old with no life experience select their degree day one, I remember picking at orientation when registering for classes, they’re like “And you can select your major.” And I, for some reason, didn’t want to say I was Undecided, because I thought that would put me behind. So I chose Teaching of English, because English was the only thing I was, like, praised for in high school, and my mom taught English. And I mean, I’m sure there’s a reality in which that would have worked out great, but I student taught, which I found to be incredibly difficult, and then I had a very hard time finding a job as a teacher. I think also, I didn’t have quite the professional maturity to be a successful teacher when I first graduated.

So first thing I did was work at UIC again. I keep working at UIC. I worked on the West Campus for a medical research project, and then ultimately Laura worked there too—we were already dating at that point.  I was a visiting researcher or whatever at that program. I didn’t really like doing that, so then I left and found an opportunity working for the Archdiocese of Chicago. I worked as the secretary to the Archbishop of Chicago and a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

I was the least important person in the most important office. So he had a direct executive secretary who was a priest. And again, you can cut out this Catholic hierarchy part, but yeah, a priest was his main secretary. And then he had two lay people as secretaries as well. And yeah, so I would like draft letters and stuff for his signature and take dictations from him and these sorts of things. I enjoyed it. It was a very unique job. It was similar to an office job in other the ways, but I was in the Quigley center in Streeterville, which is kind of like having an office in a cathedral with, like, angel balustrades and stuff on the walls. It was interesting.

Anyway, I worked there for about two years, and I liked the idea of it being in admin, sort of, but that environment was a bit odd, if you could imagine, though, the people I worked with were great. And then I worked at Northwestern very briefly. I was like a research assistant again, and I was kind of again, just general admin. And then through sheer luck, Laura was leaving a temporary position she had with the UIC Philosophy department, and they were looking for someone to hire on. And Laura mentioned that I was looking for similar work, and it just worked out really well that I jumped ship to the Philosophy Department and loved it, and I’ve been there since.

I’m hearing something that about lateral nepotism here.

Pretty much every job I got was from someone helping me out. I think only one, the one at Northwestern, I did through a recruiter or something, but otherwise, my neighbor helped me get my first job at UIC, and then I helped Laura get that job. At the Archdiocese, my aunt was a recruiter there, and then Laura helped me get this job. So yeah, I always tell this to people who, like, are feeling despondent when they’re applying to jobs. It’s like, Don’t feel bad. it’s not that you’re not good enough. It’s just someone probably knows someone [on the inside]. I mean, networking is as much as I hate the buzzword, networking is really important.

[Re: the initial idea of teaching of high school English] A part of me still wants to teach one day. I don’t, at this point, know if I ever will go back to it. I loved it, but I just did not have the mental bandwidth for all the demands teaching high school or middle school has on you.I’m grateful for jobs that let you—you know, if you’re busy all day, but then the day ends, you can go home and have that part of your life. Teaching is— you’re thinking about the next day. You’re thinking of how to adapt your lessons. You’re thinking about how to make up for what you didn’t get through that day.

And even, like, if the day starts at seven, you gotta be there at 6:30 because you need to use a printer or something. And I’m sure a lot of people who are teachers will be like, Oh, you know, you can eventually figure it out. But I think you actually need a pretty special gift to be able to do that successfully and still have any sort of peaceful life outside of it. So I do think hats off to them.

Laura:

Same kind of trajectory as Ian’s, but when you have a Bachelor’s in psychology, you have basically one path, which is to continue getting more degrees in psychology, if you want to use that, or you have to find something else altogether, which is where I went. So the first job out of college I got was just kind of a temporary position working in Joanne fabrics, which is cool because I actually got some cool crafting skills, because it’s almost required to learn on the job.

And then Ian eventually was able to get me into the same position, which was to do the research on West Campus. And I stayed there longer than Ian, until I started using the fact that it’s also part of a UIC job towards some nonprofessional degree-granting courses. And then eventually used that to start the grad program. So once I was settled into the official graduate program, I was able to then get graduate assistantships, and I started first with the UIC library. I worked in the special collection department. And I helped organize some of Mayor Daley’s artifacts, which is fun. I did that for about a year.

It was the second Mayor Daley, the son. It was like everything that he had received as gifts or awards or things from other countries and whenever people would visit Chicago. So it was kind of like everything you can imagine—like snow globes or Japanese scrolls or handwritten cards by kids that they would keep. Basically everything that the mayor receives, someone has to document, because it’s kind of like public knowledge, I guess. It has to be preserved. So that’s what the Special Collections Department in the library has—huge tons of boxes, and that’s what I was working on, is just finding ways to document all of them, or, like, look for the most useful ones, and then potentially remove the ones that were just taking up space, or if they were, like, duplicates and so on.

So I was doing that for the first year of my program. Eventually, that finished, so I wasn’t really needed anymore, but I was able to get a TA position teaching History 101, with my own actual mentor from undergrad when I was doing my History minor, which is John Abbott.I feel like a lot of tutors, especially if they’ve taken any history classes, will know him.

How did you like teaching history?

I loved it. I mean, I didn’t get to do as much, certainly, but I did lead the discussion sections until, of course, March 2020, where those became online discussion boards instead, and all the other things we were doing, like taking attendance no longer were really needed, as the pandemic had begun.

And then, by a coincidence or luck or whatever at the end of that TA position, which would have helped me with the tuition waiver and everything else—I would have had to keep paying the rest of the cost of the graduate program—but because of the pandemic, the Philosophy Department suddenly needed more help to be able to transition everything online. So they put out an emergency grant, and I applied, and I was fortunate enough to get it, and that eventually became Ian’s current position.

I think Vainis mentioned that, that you were helping Philosophy Professors build their online Blackboard sites?

Yes, and then also collecting data, because it was very new at the time of how best to actually practice online teaching. So I was basically doing research on how to do this, and then presented it to the Philosophy Department faculty. And then, yeah, so I was working in that role for about a year and a half, and then eventually did my student teaching.

I worked in a high school, actually my own high school, in Roselle, and after my semester of student teaching, I was given a maternity leave position there for one of my teachers that I worked with. And after that finished, again, I was looking for full time teaching positions, but unfortunately, none of them opened, so I had to again, kind of think about options beyond what was the most clear path forward.

So I started applying for advising positions, and I got one through Concordia University in River Forest. And then after that, I had some experience with advising, and I was able to use it towards my current position.

Did you, like Ian, have any moment of thinking that maybe classroom, teaching itself was less of a perfect fit, or was it more just lack of availability of teaching jobs that led you to take a different route?

At that time, it was more the lack of availability. But now, anytime anyone asks me, like, Oh, well, why don’t you just go back to teaching? I don’t think I’d ever want to.

We’re both really fortunate that we have remote days. So we have hybrid schedules. And that’s just impossible for any educational system. You an’t really have remote days for teachers in a classroom. And being able to just leave the office and not have to find a substitute is another privilege that I would not want to give away. So I don’t think I could ever go back just for those ways of living life that I’ve gotten accustomed to.

How many days do you both have to be on campus?

Ian: For me, I’m currently in four days a week, especially since it’s a very busy time right now, but it’s sometimes down to three in person. And then during the summer, it drops to maybe just one every once in a while, because hardly anyone comes into the summer.

Laura: For me it’s always three in person.

How did you two meet and when did you get married?

Laura: It’s another fun question with a lot of paths branching from it.

Ian: Who should start and then who should interrupt?

Laura: You go ahead and start, and I’ll interrupt you.

Ian: So I think we met at our first semester staff tutoring together. Was it our first or second? The first one? Yeah, because it was fall 2016 and we met.

Laura: It was it spring 2016.  Because we both did our 222 in the fall.

Ian: Okay, well, we technically met, but we didn’t start talking regularly until fall 2016 .

Laura: Yes.

Ian: Feel free to edit that to just fall 2016. First semester staff tutoring. So in between sessions in the little couch waiting area that I don’t think is there anymore we’d be sitting there talking, and I kept realizing we had a lot of chemistry, to the point where I would sometimes miss the class I had after tutoring, because Laura would have an off period, and I would just be talking to her during that and then just not go to my art history course. Sorry to that professor and to all art history students. It was a good class anyway. Yeah, so we ended up, I think,  October of 2016 is when we officially got together.

Any then more to say on that, on the early days?

Laura: The only thing is just that we both did our first staff tutoring in the spring, as I said, but we didn’t talk until that second semester–just for the timeline to match up.

Ian:  Yeah, so met in 2016. We got engaged at our two year anniversary. Also our engagement dinner was at Athena in Greektown, very close to UIC, just because that was one of our first dates, I think, like the first week of us being together, we went there.

And then we had a whole wedding plan for April, 2020, and then something happened, and we were not able to have that big wedding anymore or honeymoon. So after rescheduling a couple times, not realizing that the pandemic was going to last pretty long—and Laura’s parents were also about to move back to Poland, so we had a very tight window—and so we were like, All right, we’re just going to have a small wedding with just our parents, my brother Graham, another former Writing Center tutor, he officiated, and we did it right outside Grant Hall in the in front of the trees there, in the little plaza between Grant and Lincoln, and had a lovely little wedding there.

Laura: Yes. And now we’re trying to plan our five year anniversary to have the official wedding ceremony.

When we started planning, we had a whole venue, all the people ready to go. And as Ian said, it was April of 2020, so we had all that ready to go well in advance of the pandemic beginning, so now we’re just kind of getting back to all those people and saying, Hi, we’re here after five years, and we’re hoping to still work with everybody. The venue is in Libertyville in a forest preserve called Independence Grove, and there’s a little church nearby as well that will have our, like, church ceremony,

Ian: So the five year anniversary is the nominal— like the excuse to have it, but it’s effectively just going to be our ceremony and reception.

How does your experience as a writing center tutor come into play/transfer in your current work?

Laura: Yes, so for me, it makes a lot of sense to have been a tutor and then worked as a graduate assistant to run a tutoring center to now do what I do with the Burnham Hall Tutoring Center. It’s a little different, obviously, because it’s not all about English or writing. So we have tutors from every discipline, making it much harder to say like, This is the kind of thing you should be doing in your session, because I might not know, because they’re coming in from basically every kind of class on campus, so I can’t give a very specific kind of training to all of them, because it will not apply to all of them.

Some of them are also Writing Center tutors, so they have experience with both, so they might have different kinds of interactions in one center compared to the other, with the kind of students coming in for help, but for the most part, it’s a very different process and but I think having tutoring experience myself makes it a really well-suited position for me instead of any of the other advisors that I work with in my team. So I think it’s much clearer connection.

Ian: It is clear for me [too], but maybe [applies to] some of the more abstract elements—just because I always credited the Writing Center with helping with clarity of communication and working collaboratively.

And by clarity of communication, I don’t just mean thinking about writing, but also in communicating ideas to your writer and trying to establish ideas together with your writer. I think— especially early on in some of my earlier jobs—that that was hugely helpful and helped me lay the groundwork for the communicating and work I do today.

And being an effective and collaborative part of a team—I think I really got a lot out of tutoring to help with that. And more significantly [so] than all the work I had done before tutoring—I had worked at a library before then, but I didn’t feel too collaborative or really like a part of a team. But at the Writing Center, I really did, so that helped me think how to be the most helpful and supportive and collaborative coworker I could be,

What advice might you give to tutors who are interested to pursue a similar field of work? And what advice might you offer on how to survive the uncertain period of the post-grad transition?

Laura: I mean, this is kind of my job also, [advising] graduating students who are about to have that moment of realization that the real world is suddenly coming into frame.

For tutors from the Writing Center in particular, I think it’s sometimes easy to forget how useful their skill set is, whether that’s actually writing something every day, or the experience of having clarity of language and communication, helping others find that in their own work, the work that they need to do in order to show progress over time. So I guess patience, also? Those things are super important basically anywhere that you’re working, especially if it’s a team-driven workplace,

Ian: Can I jump in on that point you just made too? That’s something I do want to say to people going into English, writing anything in that field…. I remember just kind of getting roasted in undergrad, with people saying, like, Oh, what are you gonna do with an English degree? Like, that’s, that’s useless. That’s a joke.

And my aunt, who was a recruiter— I felt bad about until I spoke with her, and she’s, like, No English degrees,  people want to see this. They know you’re good communicators.

So for those who are getting English degrees, don’t feel bad and don’t feel like you’re being pigeonholed because there are a ton of options. And the ability to effectively communicate that skill—either even if, say, you don’t necessarily want to go into working with literature or teaching English or something, there are a lot of different things you can do if you have clear, written and oral communication, and if you can effectively demonstrate that you have the analytical mind that comes with writing and working in English, that can apply in a lot of places.

Laura:

I think another thing that’s clear from both of our paths is that, as Ian mentioned, 18 year-olds going up to 22 year olds are probably not always going to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

And most of the things that we ended up choosing, as we kind of had these paths along our journeys, are the things that we were passionate about or felt like we were missing out on if we didn’t get a chance to try them.

So, for example, my interest in doing the Master’s in Teaching History came out of us going to Scotland on a trip together, and I just realized how beautiful the world is and also how much history there is in everything from the creation of a building to even the mountains that we saw there. And I realized that is what I felt most passionate about. And that wasn’t something that I knew when I was an undergrad; that took time and life experience to be able to find. And that kind of pushed me beyond that first job out of college, because it was only because of that that I was able to move through all these other things, this long list of other jobs.

So I think there’s definitely that liminal period where it’s unclear what the future holds, but that also has a lot of open doors within it. They’re sometimes a little scary to open in the first place, but as soon as you try them, you can see all sorts of different options that you weren’t even aware of.

Really well said. And I think what you’re describing too is the upside not being bound into a very narrow professional track right away: it allows you to look around and maybe, as a more mature person, notice what you’re actually interested in when you’re not 18, you know? So I think that’s something afforded to people who aren’t going immediately into a grad program: having a little time to try being in the world and in a job that maybe isn’t the end-goal job, but is a job that affords you a little money to travel or a peace of mind so that you feel you can be a little adventurous.

Ian:

Another thing, just for the people in that freshly graduated [period], unsure of what to do or how they’re going to get a job anywhere—as someone who just turned 30, I think there’s this thing that happens all through your 20’s of feeling you should be at a certain milestone at a certain time. Or seeing a friend who has accomplished a certain thing and feeling bad that you haven’t done the same.

And I think that’s like, totally fallacious. Don’t at any point assume you should be at a certain place. In general, comparison is the thief of joy, right? So don’t feel like you need to set expectations for where you should be [at a certain age]. Like, Oh, I’m 25 and I don’t have the high-paying job I want, or I’m not in the field I want to be in yet.

Because 1) there is a bunch of time to figure that out. And 2) there are also a lot of different significant things to focus on in life, besides just pursuing success in your career, and it’s important to develop all of that as much as you can.

Laura:

Can I add to this as well?

Neither of us have degrees that are just a simple like, And this is the job you go into with that Both of the jobs that we do, there isn’t a degree where you complete a program and then you have that job.

It’s more like we got here through various means, and all of our c workers who have had this same position had to have different life experiences in order to get here. And I think that’s really true, especially of people who are really good at writing and good at communicating ideas, you can do so much.

And sometimes those positions don’t make sense right away, until you start really putting them together, or maybe they don’t even exist yet, because there’s so many changes with things like AI and what that will look like that.

I think there’s so many opportunities that are still out there again, without having a very clear path to them. You have to find that for yourself.

That’s very helpful. I feel like another thing you two seem to have struck upon that seems worthwhile is that there’s a benefit to having a job that will pay you to go to school. So if you’re in a job that says, by the way, we have tuition benefits—there’s something to be said for that, to position yourself in a job that has a built-in opportunity to explore other jobs, in a sense. Does that feel accurate to you?

Ian: Definitely.

Laura:I think even if someone were to get into a job that doesn’t have that explicit benefit, the feeling of always wanting to adapt and grow wherever you’re at is still really important. Kind of like what you just said, Kim, of like—if you’re feeling bored, then seek out those kind of challenges that could promote you to the next thing that you’re interested in. Or even more simple than that, never stop exploring. Be curious about the world, about things going on around you. What can you do differently that would change an issue that you see, and maybe that means like doing volunteer work and then suddenly falling in love with the work that you’re doing, and then suddenly that becomes the thing that you’re actually really passionate about, and from there, you have a whole new skill set and can apply to hundreds of new positions that weren’t available before.

So just remaining interested in all these different things that could be out there, I think, is a really important thing to keep in mind.

The last question I usually ask is, what are you guys doing for fun these days?

Laura: I feel like everything we do is together anyway, so it’s like a shared answer.

Ian: Yeah, Let’s just throw everything at it.

So, yeah, we have a house, so there’s a lot of housework going on  that’s both ahobby and a requirement, because we’re fixing up our basement and stuff like that.

I’m excited for spring so I can begin gardening again. That’s my first, like, old man hobby that I’m really enjoying, and that’s been very fun.

We’re birders. We started birding during the pandemic as a safe hobby you can do away from everyone else, and we’ve loved it. So another thing we’re looking forward to in the spring.

We’re the parents of two beautiful cats, Phoebe and Pandora, who are a little Siamese mix and Bengal mix respectively.

We play a lot of video games together and watch each other play video games.

We were both big movie fans, but lately because things have been busy with work.

And Laura took up drums recently and got really good. I have been playing guitar for forever, and got really bad.

Am I missing anything?

Laura:

I think Ian didn’t put as clearly as I would have said how much work we put into our house. It really is like THE overarching thing. Like, for example, we built our whole garden— we created it from nothing, from a big pile of dirt, essentially. So he’s gonna go back to planting new pumpkins, probably soon.

Ian:

Not in the raised beds, though they took over everything last time. Pumpkins will be exiled to their own area.

What do you like to grow? Are you doing flowers or edibles or both?

Ian: I think, last year, we did almost all edibles. And I learned a lot. I planted radishes and carrots too close together, which results in just big, bulbous roots—they still tasted good, but they were really ugly. So I’m going to try and do better there.

I think  peppers, cucumbers, stuff like that this year. It’s what we talked about.

But, yeah, I think we want to eat most of it and save like $1 a month on groceries?

Yeah, but I’m very excited for getting it started back up.

And I have a mentor also in the Philosophy Department. Can I shout out people? Shout out Professor Dave Hilbert, who just ended his tenure as Chair. He gave me a lot of gardening advice, and he has beautiful, beautiful gardens at his home that we’ve been to for Philosophy Department parties. So I’m trying to steal advice from him.

Are you finding yourselves to be handy people? You said there’s a lot of housework. Are you operating power tools? What does this look like?

Laura: Yes, it’s everything you can imagine.

Ian: Laura is the handy one. I’m unskilled labor, mostly. Laura’s dad is the foreman. He knows it all. So he will come by and help us out, and Laura is like second in command.

There’s a language barrier. He speaks mostly Polish. despite us being together for eight years, I don’t speak Polish or not very much at all. So  I do what I can.

But yeah, no, Laura has developed—-I say this a lot—Laura has the frustrating ability to just be good at anything she tries. So she’s become very handy, and has, like, refinished furniture and stuff during this whole process, and has done a lot. I help a bit.

I think you only need one handy person in a couple, Ian. I also am the unskilled half. And you know, let’s be proud of our lack of skill. The handy people need grunts, and we are there for them, right?

Ian: No, the world was built on grunts, yeah.

Laura, do you own this? Do you believe you are finding your inner handiness? Are you enjoying it?

Laura: So my parents, for some context, flipped houses pretty much my whole life. So this is something that I kind of had to develop as a kid, and then eventually was able to like do more as a teen, and now, having my own house, I’m able to implement a lot of these skills gained passively throughout my life.

But a lot of what we’re doing right now is through the help of my dad, so none of this would probably be as easy to do if he wasn’t part of it. But again, Ian did make the raised garden beds and looked into all the composting stuff so he can take credit for those things.

Is there anything else on the immediate horizon you guys are looking forward to in the way of travel or otherwise?  I know you said the wedding—is that coming this summer?

Ian: Yeah, that’s going on. We’re thinking of doing a trip around Laura’s 30th birthday to celebrate both of our 30ths. The specifics of that are still TBD. What are we doing?

Laura: Well, I mean, we’re getting close to that point where we’re pretty much thinking about what to do about starting a family, so that’s kind of on the horizon at some point, but yeah, still a little bit ways off.

Ian: I think it’s at the point where we know we are going to have children, and we’re just like, you know we’re gonna wait until our house isn’t a construction site and things are a little more stable, and then, yeah, probably go there. So, but that’s on the horizon for sure.

Anything else you want to share? Is it a couple band, or what direction is music going for you?

Ian: There are couple jams, not quite a band yet? Yeah, no, it’s more just for fun, and it’s fun to practice together instead of, like, just by yourself in the basement, playing. So yeah, no, I’d like to; I’ve always wanted to play in a band, and it just never worked out. So maybe, that’s something we’ll do. Maybe they’ll be one of the early journeys of our 30s, doing a local band or something.

Is there anything I haven’t asked that you feel like you would like to share?

Ian: Feel free to not include this, this is beyond the scope of what these interviews are, but we gave our career advice. Could I give a little bit of Valentine’s Day advice?

The piece of advice I just want to give to young people on Valentine’s Day—because I know that’s a time when people who aren’t in relationships or whatever sometimes feel anti-Valentine’s Day and stuff, and like ignoring, of course, the corporatization of Valentine’s day. .

if you’re feeling, you know, lonely, or you’re looking for a relationship or something like that:

The advice I want to give as someone who—my only place of being able to say this is like being in a happy relationship—just:

Honestly and earnestly pursue your interests and people and the network you get through doing that, and the connections you make that will lead to a happy relationship.

There’s a lot of weird advice on the internet, and you’ll get weird advice from your friends. But I think you will meet people who you can develop meaningful relationships with just by being earnest and pursuing what you enjoy doing.

And that’s how Laura and I met pretty much. And it’s pretty general and broad, but I think there’s some truth to that.

I think that’s pretty wise advice. It’s also a heck of a lot less boring than trying to impersonate someone you think other people like in the hopes of attracting a mate.

It’s like, if you, if you go about doing the things you like to do, you’re probably going to come across like-minded people at some point, right? And it’s a little more organic than being like, how do I sell myself? And at least also you’re you’re not, yeah. And meanwhile, you’re doing things you like to do. So might take a little more patience.

I almost feel like that’s that’s parallel to your to your career advice a little bit—which is this idea of, if you worry less about, “what is the name of my major, and what is the name of my career,” and you passionately and earnestly pursue what’s interesting you in the moment, the careers might reveal themselves to you that align with that. Because you’re saying there are a lot of careers that don’t have a readymade path for them anyway, so if you’re doing things you really like and as a conglomerate of different interests, a job like this Honors, one that compounds many different things, or like being a philosophy admin while going to school at the MBA—those aren’t sort of readymades that exist, and there isn’t one obvious, direct path to that, but they were natural outcomes of you doing the things that were interesting in the moment and, you know, and that you got through your people around you.

Does it feel analogous? Or am I forcing the analogy?

Ian: I think you’re 100% percent right. I think as soon as you’re in a position where you are having to act a certain way or a put on any sort of pretense, I think that is where you start ending up in a harmful place.

And so when you are, when it’s earnest pursuit of your interests, in any fashion, I think that’s, that’s where good things come from.

So, yeah, no, I think it is broad enough to [claim an analogy]. Perhaps it’s so broad in fact, that is difficult to act on, but I think it is valid in some ways.

Laura, do you want to add any addendum Valentine’s Day advice?

Laura: Well, first of all, it’s the first time Ian said something like this so I’m amazed.

But I think he  summarized this kind of, like, hopeful yet patient attitude really well, that it’s like,
“Good things come to those who wait,” basically.

But truthfully, like, whether it’s Valentine’s Day being what you hope it will be, or a long term goals that one wants to set for themselves, trying too hard to force it to become a reality is never going to help. You just have to kind of live life and learn from mistakes and learn from the good things too, and try to just continue forward.

What other kind of advice can I give for Valentine’s Day?

I think a lot of memes start with like, “Find yourself a partner who surprises you”, and I’ve always been very happy that Ian is that kind of partner who surprises me. Like, he snuck into my office last year and left a bunch of treats and balloons and things like that for Valentine’s Day. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. So that’s some advice. Do that for someone else, Surprise them.

Ian: Once you have the relationship, don’t do that before.

It’s so much less creepy once you have the relationship.

Ian: Yeah, they should know who you are.

I like the “good things to come to those who wait” maxim and I feel like you’re adding the spin of “wait and also pursue the things you enjoy while you’re waiting”? Like it doesn’t have to be utterly passive, but the activeness doesn’t have to be directed at the person or career. It could just be directed at the things that you find interesting and that you like learning about.

Ian: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a combination. I think it’s patience, but don’t be idle, necessarily. Like, do pursue your interest. And even so, say you’re like, what does that mean? Like, go to a go to a club for something you’re interested in. Go to an event, go to a bookstore, if you like reading or like writing and stuff like that. And worst-case scenario, you just spend a day reading books, buying books, but like you could also make meaningful connections there as well.

“Patience” plus  “leave the house.”

Ian: Exactly.