Less LED than Lerner

More senior wisdom comes from Wong Hui Yu, CC’s artsy anthropoligical art historian! 

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Wong Hui Yu, Columbia College, Art History Major and Anthropology concentrator, Singapore.

Claim to fame: Friendly coordinator of about a year’s worth of figure models in Dodge 501 sketch sessions. Profferer of loose bits of advice in the darkroom on Wednesday evenings. Prescient advocate of some of tomorrow’s loveliest filmmakers, writers, poets, artist-activists…you know who you are !

Where are you going? Back to Singapore and an indefinite summer.

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2021?

1) Let your friends be your teachers too.

2) The days begin to merge, very quickly, and the small moments get lost. It doesn’t seem like much, but having recorded some of it—what you did that afternoon of feb 3, the look a friend gave you—could be strangely edifying later. For those moments when the past is a blur and you feel you have done nothing.

3) Demanding these years to be the ‘Best of Your Life’ right from the beginning is fatiguing. Be suspicious of this promise and all the things it tells you to perform. Take the pressure off and leave that judgement for later (or never).

“Back in my day…” The international student fee was $10 less and there wasn’t an LED board thing in Lerner flashing an aqueous, undulating list of countries through the night.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I would prefer not to

What was your favorite class at Columbia? The Ethnographic Imagination with Rosalind Morris. Ethnography of the Everyday, also with Rosalind Morris. Intro to Social Cultural Theory and Ethnography of Sound with John Pemberton. Art History Colloquium with Zoe Strother. Photo I with Thomas Roma. Modern Dance I with Caitlin Trainor. 3rd Year French Grammar and Composition with Pascale Crépon.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I foresee a continued need to consume my way through lonely, awkward, lingerings-around in exhibition opening receptions…

One thing to do before graduating: Nude model for artist society. It’s empowering and it pays

Any regrets? Not taking more visual arts classes. Not being as involved in campus groups/movements as I could have been. All the times I should have said something in person and didn’t and went home to write belated, anemic emails / texts instead.

Photo via Wong Hui Yu