Life Outside Cricket: Jess Jonassen

The ACA's Life Outside Cricket podcast series with The Grade Cricketer continues with Australian allrounder Jess Jonassen.

The four-time World Cup winner coupled the early stages of her international career with completing a Bachelor of Law and since adding some further graduate certificates to her bow, has realised having something in addition to cricket in her life is a necessity.

Some of the best bits of Episode 2 in our Life Outside Cricket series can be read below or you can listen here.

Jess has completed a little bit of post-grad here and there since finishing her law degree...

I’ve always had this thought that when cricket does finish, not many employers are going to be looking for somebody with a 10+ year-old degree, so I’ve kept adding relevant bits to keep myself busy.

I did a grad certificate in forensic mental health, currently doing a grad certificate in criminology and criminal justice.

There’s always an eye to the future for me and I can thank my parents for that.

How do you win World Cups whilst also doing a law degree, how does that work, what are you doing?

I’m lucky that I quite like reading, it certainly makes flights to international tours go a lot quicker.

I’m quite an introverted person so being out in the hustle and bustle of really busy places can be quite confronting for me. Having an excuse I guess to be up in my hotel room but still being productive really appeals to me and worked for me.

If I was planning for cricket stuff or played poorly, I had to move on quickly because I had an assignment due that week, having a distraction from an elite sporting environment really helped my perspective on everything. I know I just got really deep there but that’s been the best thing for me about study.

A few years ago I actually put study on pause and my mental health suffered and my on-field performance suffered as well. For me, having study and having something outside of the game, is a necessity for me and my life. Study’s not for everyone, but having something else is important and that’s where the ACA is really good.

On the move from Rockhampton to the big smoke of Brisbane...

I grew up in Rockhampton in a regional area of Queensland and having to move to excel at your sport, my dad was a teacher and my mum was a bookkeeper in the local area and they were really big on me having a Plan B.

We had a lot of really talented athletes from the area who had moved interstate mainly for rugby league but after a few years they came back because things didn’t work out and they didn’t have a back-up option.

For me, if I was to move from Rockie it was going to be study and for sport, it wasn’t one or the other it had to be both.