Maya Lin Interview (page: 3 / 8) Artist and Architect	Print Interview

Aside from your parents, were there any other people in your life who inspired you or motivated you?

Maya Lin: I would say there were many influential teachers. A funny phrase comes to mind, it's an awful phrase: teacher's pet. And yes, I was one of those. The other kids probably hated me. That's probably why I didn't have any friends. I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. I remember this one chemistry teacher, Miss McCallan. I liked making explosives. She liked hanging out. We would stay after school and blow things up.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One time I made this incredible powder, flash powder, and I made way too much of it. And I remember I was working out of a crock that must have been this thick -- walls. And it exploded! I mean it was bad. It was stupid, stupid, stupid of us. And I couldn't hear. Like it was loud. It was louder than a rifle report. And the head science teacher comes in, a very serious man, and he's looking around. And he's going, 'What did I just hear?" And we were deaf at that point. We couldn't hear anything. And we went, "Nothing, nothing. I didn't hear anything. Did you?" And so what you don't realize, I think, is that some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think. And so there's supposed to be this distance, but by the time I was a senior in high school, she was maybe four or five years older than me, maybe a little older. But we had a lot of fun doing that.

There were other teachers; both my art teachers were just wonderful throughout. I really enjoyed my whole educational process. And it was fun. That's what I actually thought was really fun. So yes, there were many influential people.

Was there anything you were bad in as a student?

Maya Lin: Gym. I failed. In fact, that was the only teacher, I think, that really disliked me, and I disliked her just as much. We won't name her. I was really good at track, but anything else in gym, just shoot me. I was the smallest in my class. When I was little you play that stupid game where they pick teams or you would have to break through the line and nobody would want me on their team because I was half the weight of everyone else. There was no way I could break through the line. From that moment on, anything involving gym was like, "Get me out of here."

Were books important to you when you were growing up?

Maya Lin: I read like a demon. If I'm working on an art work, I tend to daydream when I'm reading so I can't read when I'm working on a few projects. So I would take summer breaks, in between work, and then I would just devour books voraciously. Like one year back from college I think I read nothing but Nietzsche. Another summer was Nabokov.

When you were a kid, what books did you read that excited your imagination?

Maya Lin: The Hobbit, the J.R.R Tolkien series, The Narnia Chronicles, anything that was science fiction, or fantasy related. I have the most obscure science fiction/fantasy collection that you could possibly have. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peakes, top that! It was actually really awful, but yes, I read it. I think I had shelves and shelves of this sort of pseudo sci-fi, not hard core sci-fi, but sort of in between science fiction and fantasy. That's what I pretty much focused on if I wasn't making something, which I was mostly doing.

So how did you feel when you finally left home and went to Yale?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Maya Lin: I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. And you know, Athens, Ohio, town of 15,000. I applied almost as a lark. I didn't know where I was going to go to school and I got in, and I was just so happy, and it was really surprising. And then, when I got there, the whole shock of being in a way not as well prepared academically for an Ivy League school and learning that you were the dumbest person in your class, not the smartest. No, it was very, very, intimidating. And it was also funny because my -- as I started to really focus on art and architecture, my roommates were appalled. Like one semester I never went to the library. I mean, I was pulling all nighter after all nighter obsessing about this project or that.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

My brother to this day hasn't forgiven me that I didn't take a history course. I always took soft history courses like sociology. I think if I could do it all over again, I really missed out on some great courses. But in art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. So if you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again you never finish. And I was one of those crazy creatures. The saving grace is I still got a fairly solid liberal arts undergraduate education minus the history, which I'm still regretting.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I really sometimes question students who have chosen to go into like an architecture school from day one, because I think they're missing out on the English courses, the science courses, the math courses. If you can afford the time to do graduate and undergraduate, I would broaden your mind in undergrad and then specialize. Because I think for both art and architecture, you have your whole life ahead of you. Don't think that at age 18 you want to like just focus in on your own personal world. It's like, open it up for a while. I think it's invaluable.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

It's this whole thing about public school versus private school. It was tough, and yet I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere else. A lot of my classmates went through an incredibly rigorous, competitive high school for four years, but by the time they hit sophomore or junior year, they were so tired. I am actually glad I didn't have any of that. I wasn't obsessing about my SAT scores or my PSATs. I loved getting straight A's, but that was more for me. Now I look at the pressure kids go through in high school!

You should be having more fun in high school. You should be exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning, not worrying about the fact that, "Oh, at this private school only three are gonna go to that school." That's tough competition. We have two young children, so we'll have to go through this debate.

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