Monique Vachon
![Monique Vachon](/news/2015/05_may/pictures/vachon_monique_1561_news_item_size.jpg)
Since she was a freshman in high school, Monique Vachon knew she wanted to come to East Tennessee State University. It was the school’s renowned bluegrass program that drew her to the university, some 2,400 miles away from her hometown of Trout Creek, Montana.
“I didn’t apply to any college other than this one,” says Vachon, who is set to graduate from ETSU on May 9. “I knew this was where I belonged.”
Vachon, now 23, began playing fiddle when she was just 6 years old, following in the footsteps of her musically inclined parents – her father plays all string instruments while her mother plays stand-up bass. Even Vachon’s younger sister is involved in music, taking up guitar and singing.
“My dad had a bluegrass band and we’d trail behind him and do gospel sets at his concerts,” Vachon recalls.
Shortly after arriving at ETSU in 2010, though, Vachon says she found herself veering from those bluegrass roots and considering a different career path.
“It’s not that music wasn’t challenging to me, but I picked something that was a little harder for me,” she says. “I love music and I always will, but I just didn’t see making a career out of it. I didn’t want to end up hating it and making it all about the money, either.”
After observing a friend working in radiography, Vachon says she felt a pull toward the occupation.
“I enjoyed it so much. I knew this was me,” she says. “I just saw myself long term in radiography.”
She quickly changed her major to radiography, a program offered through ETSU’s College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences, and bumped bluegrass down to a minor.
“I really like health care,” she says. “And it is just so neat capturing the moment, seeing people’s bones and how we’re helping people get better.”
While the two fields – music and health care – couldn’t seem more different, Vachon says they actually “go hand in hand” in a lot of ways.
“I feel like I am a better communicator with patients because of my music background,” she explains. “I am just so used to talking to people when I did concerts and after shows. It’s just natural. I was raised that way.”
Despite the change in career focus, Vachon has managed to keep bluegrass in her life.
One of her favorite memories during her time at ETSU is when she studied abroad, in Ireland, for three weeks through the bluegrass program.
“I never thought I’d go abroad. This school allowed me to do that, and to do it through music, which is amazing,” she says. “It was so neat. We got to play some Irish tunes and the people were so cool – and there were so many potatoes everywhere.”
The culture shock was nothing new for the Midwesterner who, just a year before that, up and moved to the south to attend a college thousands of miles from anyone she knew. And like her positive experiences in Ireland, adjusting to life in East Tennessee was relatively seamless.
“When my family left, it was so lonely at first, but then I met some really good friends. Everything is definitely different, but the people are so kind. There are such good people here,” she says. “I’ve gotten hooked on sweet tea and the southern life.”
Vachon currently works at the Johnson City Medical Center as a student x-ray technician and soon will be trained in conducting MRIs. Eventually, she hopes to become a physician assistant in orthopedics – and, of course, has no plans to give up playing music any time soon.
No matter what she ends up doing after graduation, Vachon says she’ll be doing it all right here in East Tennessee.
“I love it here,” she says. “This is my home now.”