Things I have overheard.

Let's listen in on my fellow students...

"After I had him arrested, he didn't bother me anymore."

"I'm going to a different tanning salon next time. My tan isn't popping like it should."

"I don't plan to support myself! First I'll depend on my daddy, then on my boyfriend, then on my husband, & then if he leaves, back to my daddy."
(This one, this one...hoo, boy. I nearly had a feminist stroke right there on the floor.)

"They don't let us look at our phones here, but when I'm working, I'm going to have my phone out the whole time."

"I only have to spend two weekends in jail."

"Did you just say that your half-sister is younger than your daughter?"
"Yeah."

It feels like the first time.

I've been sick for a couple of days with a nasty, spiteful summer cold. I spent most of Monday horizontal, trying to will myself to get well. I intentionally didn't sleep during the day, though, so I could sleep at night. Then I couldn't sleep at night. I awoke with one half of one functional nostril. But nothing, nothing, I tell you! could keep me home from school today. Because today was the day we got all our stuff & some of us, including me, went out to work on the clinic floor.
We got our kits this morning: big, black, rolling suitcases full of everything from shears to a new mannequin head to pin curl clips & a manicure set. A gazillion brushes & combs! Clippers! Hair dryer, marcel iron, flat iron! A big ol bunch of rollers! Etc, etc. After we inventoried all that & made sure we had everything we were supposed to, we had our individual evaluations with the director. My seat in the classroom was closest to the door so she took me first. Honestly, I was pretty overwhelmed & tired at that point, so I don't remember exactly what my grade is. She showed me how I was doing & said nice things ("Your grades & your attendance are both really good! Just what I like to see!") & some nice things that were funny ("You got a perfect score on your attitude & your appearance. Not everyone in your class did.") & I know I'm doing well. That went pretty quickly & then she said, "OK, if you want to, you can go ahead & get your stuff & get your station all set up," & I said, "Oh...ah...oh, that's ok. I mean, I think I'll just wait til someone else is coming out, too, y'know..." & started wandering away when I was pounced upon by one of the teachers, a small, energetic woman. She said, "Here, let's get you set up & then I'll get you a client to work on." I believe I spluttered in response. At least, in my head I did. "WAIT!" I wanted to say, "EVERYONE ELSE IS STILL IN THERE!" Or possibly, "Uh, I really don't feel good today." Which was true & I had this terrible vision of working on one of the many tiny, frail old ladies who come in to get their hair done, giving her my cold, & then later hearing that she had died. I guess I was in a melodramatic mood. In reality, I just fetched my stuff, bade farewell to my classmates, & headed out.
I set up my station as slowly as possible, unboxing & unwrapping all my new stuff & stowing it in the cabinet under my station (I'm not really clear on why it all came in a big rolling suitcase, which I just brought home at the end of the day). The other six people who had enough hours to work on the floor starting today filtered out over the next hour. Then, suddenly, the tiny energetic teacher appeared by my station. And she was holding a yellow ticket. "I have a client for you. Manicure." I gave her a terrified look (I don't just think that I did, it was confirmed by the people around me; "deer in the headlights" was the phrase I heard the most) & said something like, "Um." Now, I am not particularly good at manicures & we don't focus on them at all, but we do have to do them. Tiny Energetic helped me gather up what I needed & set up a manicure table. I went out to the lobby & called the client's name. I tried to act relaxed & normal. I've been told that when I'm very nervous, I actually look really calm. I always think that it's the same principle that I remember from the Oliver Sacks book/DeNiro movie "Awakenings": I'm shaking so fast that I appear to be completely still. She was 18 & I decided that was good, how many professional manicures could she have had in her life? Plus, as I looked at the price on the ticket, for $5.50, she shouldn't have grand expectations. She chose a metallic green polish from our selection of mostly old, clumpy bottles. I started in & the teacher whose class I just left walked by. "Ah!" she said, "A manicure!" & smiled at me kindly. I know she knew how nervous I was. We'd been expressly forbidden to tell the clients that they were our first service, so she couldn't really say anything about how new I was. She turned to the girl & said, "She does very good work. You're going to love your manicure." And that made my day. Maybe my month. I did a fine job & the girl did seem happy at the end.
And so ends the story of my first paying customer.

A dilemma.

Some of my friends from beauty school have tried to friend me on Facebook. I feel like I can't do that with anyone from there because of this blog. So far I've dealt with it by just saying, "Facebook? Oh, I haven't seen your request. I'm never on there!" & then just ignoring their friend request. I'm not really sure what else I can do, though it is a struggle because there are people I'd like to get closer to & that would be one way to do it. But writing this feels important to me, if only because I enjoy doing it so much. I don't think I can have both.

Moving on up.

Last week was difficult. I was having a hard time in my personal, non-school life: lots of emotions, not a lot of sleeping or eating. Not the best way for this week to be. It was already going to be stressful, even if everything else in my life was absolutely wonderful, or even neutral, & it was definitely not either of those. The fact that I got through it all ok makes me feel pretty good about myself & my ability to function under less than ideal conditions. Saying all that makes me feel weird. I'm not really comfortable being my own cheerleader, but I'm trying to get better at that. It was a temporary situation & things have gotten better & I know the next few weeks will be easier.

Tuesday was the perm test, which I wrote about in the last post, & I got a B+. Wednesday we had a written test on haircutting: pretty easy & I got an A. Also on Wednesday, we had our state board head test. This was one of the two I was most nervous about, because, unlike the perm test, it had things in it that I just am plain not good at. With the perms, I'm ok, I'm just not the fastest. But this...I just had to take a deep breath & go. I was exhausted & distracted &, well, maybe that works for me, because I did the best job on it that I ever have. My ridge curl actually had a ridge! My roller placements were, in fact, judged to be perfect! I really love rollers so that made me feel particularly proud & happy. So I got an A on that (the picture at the top is my state board head, showing the ridge curl side). And then on Thursday we had the 300 hour exam (meaning we've been in school 300 hours, not that it was an exam that took 300 hours to complete). I barely studied for this, just while I was in school, because of my aforementioned difficult times, so I was a little worried that I might do badly. In the end, though, I did just fine & got another B+. This one exam accounts for 75% of our grade, so I'm assuming I have a B+ish overall. Hmm, or maybe an A? I assume they'll tell us our grades at some point. We have more exams like this at 600, 900, & 1200 hours (when we get to 1500, we're done & take the state board exams, though we may also have some sort of school final as well). I can only hope to do as well on those as I did on these. The best thing about these tests is that everyone passed (one person-coughBitchyBitchcough-flunked the perm test, but passed enough of everything else to pass) & so we're all moving on to the clinic floor together. I couldn't feel as happy if that weren't the case. I was especially worried about my neighbor, Sabina, who really struggles with English (she's Korean) & therefore all the written tests (while being the most amazing natural at all the practical stuff). But she passed, too, hooray! People who have missed more than a few days have to stay behind in the classroom at first but we should all be out there by the beginning of next week.

This Tuesday, the majority of the class, including me, will be out on the clinic floor, cutting hair for real, live, paying customers. This is very nearly terror-inducing. Obviously it's what we've all been waiting for & wanting, but now that it's here, I think everyone is scared. I know I am. Above all, for everyone I think, is the fear of failure, the fear of messing up, of being embarrassed, or doing something that looks or seems or is stupid. A very wise man named Chris Rossi once told me I needed to get over my "fear of sucking" (the context being that I didn't want to do karaoke) because all that fear does is hold you back. That's so true, that kind of fear does nothing for you. I try to rid myself of it, but it hovers there & stops me from doing some things that I'd like to do. However, it won't stop me here. At some point on Tuesday, they're going to hand me my first yellow ticket, with the client's name & the service they've come in for written on it, & I have to go out to the waiting room & call them in, take them back to my station (#42!), & do whatever it is they need done.

This is a week of tests.

I go to school four days a week. Three of those days this week we're having tests. Two of the tests are practical ones, where we're timed doing something & then graded both on our ability to finish within the allotted time & how well we're able to complete the task. We had one of those today, which had me pretty petrified, but then it worked out well. We had to wrap a perm on a mannequin head, wrapping the whole head with single flat wraps (I know that most of you won't know what I mean by that; it's just in there for the few who will). We had to complete the head in an hour, starting out with the hair combed straight back, & it had to be neat. We were graded on the neatness of our parts (you divide the hair into nine sections for this), the evenness of hair distribution on the perm rods, the placement of the band on the rod, whether or not we had any fishhooks (meaning the ends weren't wrapped correctly & would end up being bent instead of curled), the straightness of our rows of perm rods, maintaining an even number of rods on each side of the head, etc, etc. Now, I can wrap ok, but I have never completed a whole perm wrap in an hour. I think maybe I've done it in, like 1:07. So I knew I'd lose a few points on my undone sections. All I wanted was to pass. But it became increasingly clear that she was going to give us more than an hour. She set the timer after we'd started (instead of as we started) & then when it went off, told us to keep going. It went off again & she said, "Keep going! Finish up!" So I did finish the whole head, probably in about 1:10. In all fairness, I should have gotten a lower grade than the people who finished in under an hour. But I wasn't the one who was grading & I got a 93, with just a few points off for crooked bands or unevenly distributed hair or whatever. What I'm saying is, I did better than by all rights I should have. I feel a little bad about that, but I don't see how I can do much about it.
Tomorrow (well, today, I guess it is) we have a written test on haircutting, which I don't think will be too bad, & a practical on what's called a state board head, meaning it's one of the things we'll have to do when we take the state board exam. On one mannequin head, we have to roll three rollers with different placements on top of the head, wrap a row of perm rods down the center of the back of the head, do a c-shaping with pin curls on one side of the head, & do a ridge curl (which also has pin curls) on the other side. I can do this in an under an hour, easy. I like doing rollers, that small number of perm rods is fine, & I don't mind pin curls. But that ridge curl, well...it's kinda like a finger wave. Like a sneaky, sideways finger wave. By which I mean I'm not very good at it. So, we'll see how it goes. I'll have time to work on it, but I'm not sure any amount of time will make my ridge curl very, y'know, ridged.
Thursday we have our 300 hour exam, a written test on everything we've learned so far. That's a little intimidating. I haven't really been studying much, my personal life is a little hectic at the moment, so I'm mostly going to hope that my memory will serve me well.
Next week, they send us out on the floor & give us paying customers! Crazy! Intimidating! Exciting!
I should mention that I've been observing at the salon where I've been getting my hair cut for years. They very kindly let me come in & look over their shoulders & then take the time to explain what they're doing & why. It's pretty wonderful & I'm very grateful to get to do it. I feel like I'm getting a leap ahead in experience. I'm wary of getting in people's way & look forward to being more useful than I am right now, which is not very useful at all. I'm also shampooing some customers, which is good practice. I think I do all right at it, though I know I can improve. Yesterday when I got done with one lady, she sat up & said, "That was very nice, you're very gentle...Can I have a tissue? My ears are full of water." Sigh. Even with something as simple as this, there's always something for me to learn.