Left Behind

There are a lot of great things about growing up, but a lot of things also suck pretty badly. You pay your own bills, you make tough choices, and your mom is no longer the one picking you up from a party; that’s all on you now. I’ve found that one of the hardest things […]

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Optimistically Unhappy

It may be the hipster in me, but I consider myself an optimistic pessimist — or optimistically unhappy. Yes, that sounds like I am absolutely contradicting myself, but this is Ask Lara, and I’m using that as an excuse to make up things that probably can’t be true and making them true — like Big […]

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Mine

I am a writer, I am a painter, I am an illustrator, and, on some days — not only because of Instagram — I am a photographer. Through preschool and kindergarten, all of my instructors and teachers showed me how to embrace my individuality through different forms of expression. In elementary school, I was taught […]

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Look Into My Eyes

Please play the song below before reading on… (*waits patiently*) During the process of developing communication skills, the first thing someone usually learns is how important eye contact is. Eye contact shows that you are interested in what the person in front of you is saying and that you have fully dedicated this moment to […]

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Let’s Talk About My Generation

When you enter your twenties, the daunting feeling you’ve always had about age and generation gaps begins to blend. For example, Lena Dunham, the twenty-eight-year-old writer of Girls, would seem so much older and so much more superior if I were sixteen; but, now, being twenty-three, I realize that, technically, we are of the same […]

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