Maya Lin Interview (page: 4 / 9) Artist and Architect	Print Interview

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

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.
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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.

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.
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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.

When did you realize what you wanted to do in life?

Maya Lin: Oh, about five years ago, seriously. I loved animals when I was growing up. I thought I was going to become a veterinarian. Then I sort of switched. In high school I was definitely going to become a field zoologist because I love animals and I love the environment. Half the kids I went to school with would say, "Oh, she's going into science." The other half would say, "Oh, she's going into English". My mother is a poet and English professor. My dad's a ceramicist, and a Dean of Fine Arts. I was always making things. But it was always very academic and none of this connected. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I would be an artist.

Then I get to Yale and my advisor is a science advisor because I have specified my interest is field zoology and animal behavior. I actually wanted to go out in the field and understand why animals are what they are. It was Dr. Apville, who I still talk to every now and again, and he says, "Yale's animal behavioral program is probably not what you're going to approve of." And I said, "Well, why?" He said it's neurologically based and that it dealt with vivisection. I didn't even know what vivisection was, but it basically means dissecting the animals while they're still alive. I looked at him and I said, "You're absolutely right. Ethically there's no way."

Though I was actually tracked pre-med at that time, I thought, "This isn't going to work." Then I thought of architecture because I thought it was this perfect combination of art and math, art and science. In high school, two or three of the independent courses I took at the university were teaching myself Fortran, Basic and Cobol.

I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. Then it takes me seven years of architecture school to realize that I think like an artist. And even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I will hire firms or cause firms to be hired to work with me. I don't want to be an architectural firm ever. I want to remain as an artist building either sculptures or architectural works. And in a way what I disliked about architecture was probably the profession. I still am an artist. And basically what does that mean? It's much more individual. It's much more about who you are and what you need to make, what you need to say for you. Whether someone's going to look at it or not, you're still going to do it.
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