Tee May Yee
Enjoy every moment
Honours degree of the Bachelor of Communication (2007)
1. Full name / Age / Nationality.
Tee May Yee / 31 / Malaysian
2. What scholarships and awards have you received?
Monash Arts Communication Prize
Monash University Merit Scholarship
Inducted into the Golden Key International Honour Society (for academic achievement in the top 15 percent of undergraduate students in the university)
Monash University Honours Scholarship
Best Honours Student award for a dissertation titled "Deleuze and Postmodern Piracy: A Philosophical Enquiry"
Italian Government Scholarship for cultural & language studies at the Università per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy
3. Who is your current employer and what is your role?
The Last Polka — I co-founded this ice cream company with a kindred soul and fellow Monash graduate, Lee Ee Vee in 2010. I now lead a small team of ‘elves’, practicing culinary and administrative kung-fu on a daily basis.
4. Why did you choose to study at Monash University Malaysia?
As a 19 year old who'd taken some months off between school and university, I alternately traveled, half-learned a new language, trawled through the education fair circuit and spoken to a dozen education counsellors. Nothing quite piqued my interest until I got to Monash Malaysia. It was a relatively new university in KL with a small but dynamic, burgeoning Arts & Social Sciences faculty. The hodgepodge of passions and persuasions — I took to that immediately, and wanted to be part of it.
5. Describe your study experience at Monash University Malaysia.
While studying at Monash Malaysia, I was also interning at Astro for 20+ hours every week, reviewing music, movies and fashion. All this in between classes and deadlines, so I think my involvement in university activities were somewhat limited.
I (semi-regularly) went to Muay Thai and tennis while at Monash Clayton, and maybe tried to attend some AIESEC meetings.
There was also this great study trip to Bangkok that I went for!
6. How has your degree at Monash prepared to be where you are today?
It shaped me the way any educational experience does — there's a body of academic study that opens itself up to you, along with all its ideas about how the world works. With university, this happens while you're straddling that divide between youth and adulthood, building your own ideas about how the world should be.
My Monash experience gave me all that, along with some fantastic teachers, mentors, and friends. It helped me form some early and important ideas about what my place in the world could be, fueling an openness and ambitiousness that I think was crucial at that point in my life.
7. What is your goal in life, where are you headed to in the future?
I want to keep learning, and I want to keep experiencing the joy that comes with turning great ideas into exciting realities. It's hard to be definitive about this sort of thing, but my dreams revolve around contentment, freedom, and creativity.
8. What is your advice to current Monash Malaysia students?
Have fun! Your education is a privilege — enjoy every moment, leap at every opportunity, revel in every high and ride out every low. Appreciate your teachers, they put up with so much just to see us get it right.