Team Member Lara Bio

Hello, my name is Lara Orlandic and I am a sophomore at University Laboratory High School. When I am not at school, I enjoy running, reading, cooking, and spending time with friends and family. Thanks to my multicultural family, I speak a variety of foreign languages including Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and French. I have always loved speaking with my friends from other countries and learning how their lives compare to mine. I suspect that this is what sparked my interest in oral history.

This is my second year working as an intern, and I have enjoyed every moment of it. Last year, I helped the Counterculture team track down potential interviewees by "pre-interviewing" various people in the community. My favorite part of the project is talking to people and listening to their fascinating stories. Hearing different people's accounts and views of past events gives me a unique perspective of history that I find more valuable than learning it from a textbook. This year, I will find interviewees for the newest documentary which will focus on military personnel in Champaign-Urbana. Afterward, I will help with the production of the Counterculture project by editing interviews into the final radio documentary.