FALL 2017

The first time I noticed the “How to Work Better” mural on Houston street, it was in conversation with my dad, who pointed it out to me from a photo he’d taken on his phone. I’d definitely seen it before, perhaps on my way home from school, or while hanging out with friends in the popular, tourist-heavy corners of the Lower East Side. But, in true New Yorker fashion, I had never truly taken a moment to look at it. It was huge, yet very quiet, a massive white wall painted across a six-story building, with bold navy blue letters spelling out ten steps that supposedly lead to unlimited productivity.

Ten simple steps – “Do one thing at a time, accept change as inevitable, smile” being 1, 6, and 10. Ubiquitous, iconic words that had been plastered in studios and workplaces across the world. They seemed to be judging passerby’s work habits, but also encouraging them to pinpoint positive changes that they could make in their lives. When I walked past the mural again on a bright Sunday morning, although I couldn’t have been looking at it for more than just a few seconds, it radiated an aura of peace that lingered in my mind. In the chaos that my life was at the time as a high school junior, I probably should have heeded the advice that the mural offered, but I was far too caught up with getting slammed in the face by the impending college process. I exhaled, maybe out boredom, and then continued on to the nearby subway station. Eventually the mural was taken down and replaced by some ad, and I didn’t think about it again.

Step one says, “Do one thing at a time.” On the mural itself, the words are fragmented, so that it takes an additional moment for your eyes to reach the end of the sentence. The white space that surrounds it suggests a certain lightness to it, but it’s as if the words demand to be considered individually rather than as a full phrase. As ironic as it felt for a faceless poster to be telling someone, especially a New Yorker, to “do one thing at a time,” the words somehow came back to me a few weeks ago, right around the time when I was feeling overwhelmed with the absurd amount of opportunities I could find at a place like Yale, and even more astonished at the amount of brilliant and talented people who would totally beat me to them. Right then, taking things one at a time seemed absolutely unthinkable, but I probably wasn’t thinking straight in the first place so I decided to try it anyway.

As the residents of one of the only stand-alone doubles in Bingham Hall, my roommate Lauren and I – I’m not joking when I tell people we share the same name – often stayed up late at the beginning of the year discussing how lost and insignificant we felt. No matter how many activities we participated in, no matter how many people we met, we would still only be reaching the tip of the YaleTM iceberg. “Do one thing at a time” is tough advice, but when crunch time came around, we unintentionally made it a ritual for ourselves to list out loud the things we wanted to get done during the day. “Submit a paper, do laundry, get some work done in the JE Press, then finish a YDN illustration,” I might say. “Do Ed Studies readings, go to office hours for English 120, then get a workout in at the Hopper gym,” she might reciprocate. Of course, the advice that the “How to work better” mural gives is nowhere near life-changing, but this routine provided a way for us to organize our thoughts, and I found solace in the simplicity of the mural’s declaration to take things slowly. Though I may never stop procrastinating or trying to get involved in too many things, now more than ever I recognize the value of choosing my battles carefully.

“Accept change as inevitable” is the wisdom that step six offers. In our first week at Yale, that was one of the very obvious pieces of advice that all first-years received, but I think it holds a special relevance in my life because not many people know the story of how Lauren Chan and Lauren Gatta came to be roommates. When I logged in to the Housing website back in June, I was assigned to a room with Nadia, an international student from a prestigious school in Qatar. We exchanged enthusiasm about college life a few times over the summer, but it was slightly awkward when on August 23rd, two days before move-in day, I received an email from Dean Ruiz informing me that Nadia would not be coming to Yale. Effectively, this stranded me into a huge double with no suitemates and no common room. “A coveted setup,” Dean Ruiz wrote, but also one that would isolate me from the “traditional” college experience. On the other side of Old Campus, Lauren Chan as a Morse student was scrambling to find a new place to stay after having been assigned with another girl to a single with only one bed. I didn’t care much about being alone. I would have turned the empty half of the room into a personal art studio and started alternating beds based on my mood. Yet, I was still grateful when she decided to transfer into Hopper.

I’m no stranger to being tossed into unfamiliar social situations. 9 year-old me wasn’t exactly fazed by my family’s choice to move to America, nor do I find it weird anymore to explain to people that although my parents don’t live together, they are not separated or divorced (well, not yet). Like my parents always say, I’ve always rolled with the punches and cared little about maintaining stability in my life. So when Lauren Chan became my roommate, it was just another last minute change I’d have to deal with on the fly. Sure, a lot of people might have thought that we were the same person for a while, but even though we share many things in common, including a strong friendship at this point, we lead separate lives in terms of activities and interests. To this day I still wonder what would have happened if I’d shared a space with Nadia instead, or if I’d been the sole resident of a gigantic double. “Accept change as inevitable” is the kind of advice my chaotic self would have no trouble following in positive situations, but sometimes, it stings a little when I find myself wishing that my life could be just a bit more predictable.

Finally, there is step ten, arguably the simplest, yet most insurmountable one: “Smile.” As the shortest command listed on the mural, it gives closure to its candid suggestions. It’s supposed to send you off into the world, leave you feeling motivated and ready to challenge yourself. But in many ways, it’s also advice that I’m not sure what to do with. When Peter Fischli and David Weiss put up this mural, they knew that it would be ironic, given that New Yorkers can be some of the angriest people you’ll ever meet. If there was one person I knew who took step ten seriously and used it well, it was my favorite high school teacher, Ms. Chang. She shared a story on her art website about the power of a smile: when she was battling cancer, she came home one night after surgery feeling drained and exhausted. As she was standing in her bathroom, she fainted and fell to the ground, breaking her two front teeth on the spot. This story might sound dark, but according to her doctor, the only reason why she hadn’t busted her lip or cut her face open must have been because she was “smiling on the way down.”

Wholesome stories like that one don’t happen all the time. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that they even happen at all, but the part of me that is still naive and innocent continues to appreciate the beauty of spontaneous joy. I’ve seen many murals while growing up in New York, but none quite as simple and powerful as that one. It resonates with all creatives, hard workers, and hustlers, people who strive to make cool things happen. Although the mural is gone now, many people have caught onto its message, and it’s as if its presence persists in spite of its physical absence. Nobody knows when it might be back on the same scale – but if it ever does return, and if I could just add an eleventh point, it would be, “don't forget to sleep.”