# Lara's Fall Bio


* Has been a lluf since Fall of sophomore year!
* Is a Senior concentrating in Government with a secondary in East Asian Studies
* Ask Lara about colorLab, photoshop, all things art-making, Figma, Facebook ads, and curling!

## Lara's Top Three Things

* Instructions for Album cover face swap: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mXPlzQ2Ra1PDA7iOVlLRwUT7VmuWnAbSNCC16_BXHEU/edit?usp=sharing
* Color Lab Information Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I8XOUcXwJx89BFxFAofEIOfDT6kzmkD7xIAAbtCgHH0/edit?usp=sharing
* The Showcase Board: https://photos.app.goo.gl/T5wkh9pwrJ3nJWDA9

I chose three very different things for my Top 3 Things Made, because I think what characterizes best my time at the Learning Lab is the broad range of things I've done. To make the instructions for the Album Cover poster, I first had to have some understanding of Photoshop and how best to teach photoshop, before writing the instructions. The Color Lab information document was the seed that started many things for me, including eventually a discussion session and the creation of a lot of LL stickers and Palettes! Lastly, I consider the LL Showcase board (which I couldn't find a picture of, but here are the flowers for it, anyway). This was my most recent excursion into the world of physical art for the LL, using experience making the Week in Review boards last year.

## Lara's Goals

My interest in Photoshop has been ongoing since Freshman year, and I'm keen on advancing my skills not only in the technology itself but also in teaching the technology, because Photoshop really is a cool tool that anyone can find a use for. I'm also really interested in improving my skills in Illustrator. I've been playing around with Beziers in Figma this summer (because Figma is free while Illustrator is not), and I really like some of the stuff I've made so far! I want to be able to design stuff both digitally and traditionally, so I'm really into illustrator at the moment.

### Skills I want to level up:
* video shorts (things that go to Vox, YouTube, even TikTok)
* infographics, datavis, posters, and other graphic design

## Lara's Toolkit

## Lara's Get-to-know-me
### What Learning Means

Learning, to me, means opening up your mind enough so that you can draw upon what you already know, but not so much that you cling to it without recourse or leaving room to develop or change it. There’s lots of different types of learning, to me--for me, the primary learning types that I engage in are method learning (like learning how to make a layer mask in photoshop, or learning how to cook on a gas range), fact learning (like learning about how many muslims are separated from their children in Xinjiang, China), and thought learning (learning how to think from different perspectives--stepping into another person’s shoes or an idea’s shoes). I’m certain there are more types of learning, but these are the ones that I use most, day-to-day.

As a side note, I think you absolutely should call me out on how egregiously communistic this sounds... fact learning, thought learning, and method learning are words that remind me eerily of the

### 3 Favorite courses I've taken and why

1. Hands down, it has to be intro to photography. The 10-person, 6-hour a week class was perfect for building community (and I’m still friends with all the people in the class), and I learned so many skills and thought about things I’d never thought about before. I didn’t do amazing in the course grade-wise, but in the grand scheme of things, it also helped me realize that grades matter so little anyway.

2. Next up, I really loved Meritocracy and its critics, with celebrity professor Sandel. It was a 12-person seminar, and his entire course pedagogy is putting students into debate with one another--finding where they disagree and allowing them to sort it out--which terrified me to the core. I developed a comfort with speaking up in class and defending my ideas that I have never had before--discussing ethics means that even though you’ve read the same passages, you bring completely different perspectives to the table, and with that, you often feel like you’re defending your identity.

3. US Foreign Policy was an amazing class that confirmed to me my love of international relations, and while it definitely nipped some of my naive idealism in the bud, it also gave me a great foundation to build off of!

### 3 Songs I added
1. [Shelter of the sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UfcC-rNq7U), by Carrie Newcomer
2. [To be Human](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM8Tm9ycGz4), by MARINA
3. [You’re Amazing,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHnAVhaYnb8) by Martin Kerr

### Lara's color palette

#### this is a test: imgur hosting

### 3 Games she will play with you!
1. Love Letters, on netgames.io
2. Pentago (for the non-pandemic times),
3. Any kind of drawing game!

### 3 Debates she will engage with you on
1. Puttanesca is the superior sauce
2. Curling is more than chess on ice
3. We’d all be happier if we had learned about Daoist thought in elementary school instead of force feeding children the ideals of western individualism.

### 3 Favorite foods to make
1. Tacos!
2. Hand pulled noodles
3. OLIVES

### Personality test results