Pat
Dr Tan Meng Yoe
Standing with my PhD supervisor and my PhD scroll (2014). ▶
She was also really cool. She wore a t-shirt and jeans,
with a chain attaching her wallet in the back pocket to
her belt, and she had a tattoo on one of her forearms.
More importantly, she was really smart. She made me
hate the word “discourse”, but “context makes the text”
has stayed with me to this day. I didn’t breeze through
that first-year unit. In fact, trying to get a distinction for
one of her classes became the holy grail of my studies
(thankfully I achieved it on my final attempt).
She intimidated me because, quite frankly, she didn’t
come across as the friendliest person. It was easy to
chit chat with the other lecturers, but I generally stayed
away from her. She either sounded too intense with her
brilliance, or too cold. As such, I did not get to know
her as well in the early years of my time at Monash.
During my third year, I needed to see her for an
assignment. It was the first time I stepped into her
office, and after quickly dispensing advice to my query,
I got up to leave. Then, I noticed on her wall were
◀ Dr Pat Goon
in action (2007).
many sheets of paper with Bible verses printed on it –
mostly about faith in God. I casually asked her, “why
those verses, Pat?”
She looked up at me, then told me why.
It was the question that turned her into my personal
mentor. Pat told me that she was struggling with some
health issues, and her faith was what kept her going.
She told me about how her career as an academic
increasingly did not make much sense, and how she
still found meaning in her Christian faith. In turn, I told
her about my questions – some topics in the course
made me rethink the God discourse. She stopped
me, and proceeded to tell me how to make sense of
Christianity in the context of what I was studying. I
can’t remember exactly what she told me, but it made
sense and I never looked back.
Other students showed up at her door, wanting to
see her about the assignment. I got up to make way.
She said, “Sit down. THIS is important. THEY can
wait.” She recognized that a person’s life journey was
significantly more important than some questions
about a university assignment.
And that’s it – that’s what I remember best about Pat,
and a lot of folks at SASS. They weren’t just good
teachers, they were good people. They bothered.
I hope that, for all of us, this 10th anniversary event is
a celebration of good people. I’ve certainly met many.
Pat’s one of them.
Meng Yoe graduated with a Bachelor of
Communication in 2006 and a Bachelor of
Communications Honours in 2007. Subsequently,
he went on to complete a PhD in Communications
at SASS (2014). He currently teaches at SASS.
35
They
weren’t
just good
teachers,
they were
good
people.
They
bothered.
The first time I met Dr Patricia Goon, I was both
intimidated and in awe of her. I met her “early” too. It
was a first-year unit – Introduction to Communication
(or something like that. Who cares). It was one of
those units people expected to breeze through. I
expected to breeze through it, but Pat showed up in
class, introduced herself, and explained that she was
teaching the unit to relieve another lecturer who had
too many teaching hours. She made it unnecessarily
hard. I nearly failed.