Joannie Rochette travelled the world after earning a bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympics – skating in ice shows and doing what she loved in a laidback atmosphere.
It was an amazing experience and a nice lifestyle, but Rochette felt something was missing. It was a little too comfortable.
“I couldn’t foresee myself doing that until I was 50. I thought that I needed a new passion, like something that keeps you up at night,” says Rochette, a former six-time Canadian figure-skating champion.
She had pondered a medical career since her time at CEGEP and decided to take the plunge, applying to McGill. A few in her entourage predicted it would be tough being a student again because of the very different lifestyle, but Rochette loved the transition.
“I would go to bed at night feeling like I’ve learned so much in a day,” Rochette says. She recently began her second year of medical studies at McGill (she also did one year in pre-med). She welcomes the steep learning curve, “and feeling like you’re just a beginner and you know nothing, and being coached.
“I’ve been coached all my life, so it kind of felt natural to go back to being a student and having teachers and exams and a very structured lifestyle.”
In fact, she believes a lot of elite athletes struggle after their Olympic experiences because they don’t have that structure anymore. “You don’t have your coach kicking your butt every day for training. And I feel like that’s what med school has been to me for the past two years. It’s challenging, but it’s been good.”
Rochette will start working in a hospital in January. In mid-September, she and her McGill peers received their crisp white coats at the Faculty of Medicine’s annual White Coat Ceremony – the event marks a second-year med student’s transition from the classroom to clinical encounters and the responsibilities associated with seeing patients.
Rochette doesn’t yet know what area of medicine she wants to focus on, but is looking forward to working in a hospital.
“What I hear from people is you retain a lot more when you actually meet the patient, take a history and it’s not just theoretical.”
Not that Rochette is complaining about the theory — she has really enjoyed being in school, singling out her anatomy lab “which I love.
“I’m very visual and I feel like when you see it in the book, it’s not exactly the same 3-D understanding of the structure as when you see it in a real body. And as an athlete I thought it was incredible to see all the leg and arm muscles and to see how they move.”
Rochette is remembered for the remarkable poise and fortitude she displayed at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, where she performed under heartbreaking circumstances. Her mother Thérèse suffered a fatal heart attack two days before her competition started. Rochette mustered the strength to compete, delivering two strong performances and earning a bronze medal.
She acknowledges that she wonders now how she did it. “But I feel like the adrenaline kicks in and I had a whole team with me… We’re lucky as figure skaters because you have the music to really stay in the now and focus… But I wouldn’t want to have to do it again right now.”
Rochette believes her prior life in the world of elite sports assists her with her current challenges as a medical student.
“I think what sport gives you is some sort of discipline and being able to do it constantly, every night. Even if you don’t feel like it, you know you need to do it. And that’s what it was with skating. Even if I loved it, I did not want to do it as much as I did, every single day,” she laughs. “But the long-term goal is what was pushing me.”
Rochette had a rather eventful summer. As an ambassador for Right to Play, the global organization that uses sports and games to educate and empower children, she travelled to Ghana in early July, visiting Right to Play projects as part of a delegation with Canada’s Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, Marie-Claude Bibeau.
“I really like the organization and I think that it’s a smart way to use sport and play to teach kids life values [and] lessons,” she says.
In August, word came that Rochette will be inducted into the Skate Canada Hall of Fame. Rochette didn’t expect it would happen so soon.
“It’s a big honour because I feel like I dedicated my whole life to that sport and, of course, joining the ranks of some of my skating idols is something that I would not have imagined growing up.”
