They call me Nature Girl.

Before I get started with the rest of this post, I want to thank everyone who wrote me after the last one, "You're too smart for that." Some of you commented here, some on Facebook, some of you emailed me, & some of you talked to me. I guess it struck a chord with a lot of you, which is gratifying to me as...a writer? Or whatever you want to call what I do here. I tried to answer everything, but I'm not sure that I did, so I wanted to say how much I appreciated hearing from everyone. Now, back to our irregularly scheduled blah blah...

The desire to change me has stepped up among my fellow students. At least once a week, someone suggests that I a. grow my bangs long, b. highlight my hair, c. wear more eye makeup, &/or d. grow my nails longer. I look around & realize what they mean is: look like us. I am the only one there with what I think of as real bangs (above my eyebrows), possibly the only one who is wearing lipstick, & among a very few with only my natural haircolor (virgin hair, it's called, when there are no chemicals in it), minimal eye makeup, & short nails. Now, I'm not opposed to change (& have in fact cut my hair from below shoulder-length to a short bob since I've been there) & I'm not saying that I would never do any of these things (well, I'm not going to grow long nails because I think they're icky), but these suggestions do seem to come from a place of conformity. One girl, who I like for the most part, touched my hair & called me "Nature Girl" because I wasn't wearing hair spray. Nature Girl! Now, I consider that as something of a compliment, which I don't think is how she meant it. This same girl offered to fix my hair on class picture day (Glamour Shots-style pictures, no lie) & when I said, "No, this is how I like my hair," she replied, "Messy & poufy?" I thought about it for a minute & then said, "Well, actually, yeah. That describes what I like pretty well." I guess the implication is that I couldn't possibly look the way I do on purpose, I couldn't have put any thought into it. I'm just accidentally filing my nails down & too lazy to highlight my hair. I have noticed that especially among students who have been there for a while, there are very strong trends. For a while, everyone (& by everyone, I mean about ten or twelve girls) had extremely bleached out bobs, some with a peek-a-boo color (meaning a darker or brighter color on the underneath layer of their hair). Now they're all going with a dark reddish brown. I think it takes a strong sense of self to resist the constant pressure to change. We'll see how I do.
I had a really delightful client on Friday. She was a pleasure to talk to, interesting & funny, & she had lovely hair. I'm not complaining about the other people I've had, but it was really refreshing to have someone who I could kinda relate to. She looked good when I was done (color & cut) & said she'd ask for me the next time she came back & bring her sons in for haircuts, too, so I'm hoping I just got my first repeat customer lined up.
I'm also cutting hair at home (or at other people's homes) & practicing blowouts on whoever will let me. It's nice to be free from the eyes of the teachers; with some things I might miss their guidance, but I'm trying to be aware of my limitations & work within them. I'm not going to try to do anything on my own that I'm not pretty sure of. I've appreciated how patient everyone is with me (I'm not doing anything fast at this point) & that they trust me enough to let me at their heads. I've gotten support in a million different ways since I started this, from Adam who helped me decide & take the leap & get started & who gets up in the morning with me, to David who invited me to come observe at his salon, to the people who read this & let me know what they think. Those of you who let me practice on you are giving me another kind of support. I can't thank any of you enough.

You're too smart for that.

Before I quit my job to start school, I had worked in what I'll call the book industry for about 20 years. I got my first bookstore job in the summer of 1989, after my freshman year of college. With the exception of a few brief periods totalling about a year & a half where I worked at a clothing store, a record store, & as a full-time art class model, I worked in bookstores until 2001. Then I worked in publishing, then back to a bookstore, then back to publishing until now, 2010. I never felt like my identity was tied up in my job, but I have realized that, in a way, it was. Not with any specific job, but part of how I thought about myself was as someone who worked with books. The world of books & reading has always been a huge part of my existence. I'm the younger of two children & I can remember realizing that everyone in the house could read...except me. And it killed me! So I learned as fast as I could & I haven't slowed down since. Working with books seemed the most natural career for me to have because reading was definitely the thing I spent most of my spare time doing. And it still is.
When you tell people that you work with books, they seem to assume, right or wrong, that you're smart. They at least assume that you read. So I considered the possible change in people's perception of me when I decided to make this move. About 98% of the time when I told someone I was planning to go to beauty school, they said, "That's perfect!" or "I can totally see you doing that!" or things of that nature. But two people responded in the way that I feared. One of them said something like, "Hunh...THAT'S what you want to do?" with the implication that it was a strange move for me. The other person (a very smart woman, I should add), actually said,"You're too smart for that." She backtracked pretty quickly & admitted that the stylists in the salon where we both went were all very smart & quite well-educated people. But I had seen what her first response was. In a nutshell: that's not a career for smart people. Which I then extrapolate to: when people meet me, will they not think I'm smart anymore? It seems a funny brand of shallowness for me to worry about this, but I do.

Stranger in a strange land.

It's surprising to me how long it's taking me to feel at home. In some ways I did pretty soon, but in other ways I still feel alien. Part of it is how little I have in common with everyone I've met (I think I've found one of the few spots in North America where being a brunette puts me in the minority). It's the lack of a shared aesthetic that always strikes me. There's the occasional overlap, but for the most part I admire different things than my fellow students. I think many of them think I'm drab or odd (or both); it's been suggested that I highlight my hair, grow my bangs longer, & wear more makeup. Among my friends, I think I wear more makeup than nearly all of them & probably do more to my hair, too (well, maybe not that part: I wash it nightly, dry it, & sleep on it). But I am in a different world now & my red lipstick is not enough.
I've been out on the floor working on real clients for two weeks now. We still work on our mannequin heads, too. There are about 60 or 70 students & not enough clients for everyone, plus there are things we have to practice that few people come in & ask for (curse you, finger waves!). Everyone I've had so far has been either nice or neutral. The oldest people are the friendliest. I haven't made any terrible mistakes, though I have had some mishaps:

• When I was putting the cape on my first hair client, I accidentally touched her breast. Then I took her to the sink where I...
• ...sprayed water on the teacher who was supervising me.
• During the first haircut I gave with scissors, I cut my finger & was too embarrassed to say anything to the woman. I hope I didn't bleed in her hair. I don't think I did.
• Trying to clip closely behind a man's ear, I cut him & he started to bleed a little. Sorry, sir. I hope that didn't hurt too much.

I've had plenty of bright moments, too, though:

• After I very carefully did a color retouch on an older man who very exactly knew exactly what he wanted & exactly how he wanted it done, he praised me to the supervising teacher.
• I told a very old woman, who was not my client but was under a dryer nearby & asked me a question, that she had beautiful blue eyes. She covered her face & said, "No, no, I'm so ugly, I hate to even come out." I told her she was wrong & that she was pretty & had truly beautiful eyes (all true) & she looked so happy & as though she might cry.
• A friend of mine came in for a haircut & he was the first client I've had where I didn't get intensely nervous & sweaty while working on him. And since then, I haven't again. It was also overwhelmingly nice to talk to someone with whom I have things in common. Thanks, Skip!

I'm at the point where school will stay pretty much the same until I'm done. What will change the most is how much I feel able to do & how much supervision I get. I feel like I have a gazillion miles to go, but when I look back to three months ago, I feel like I've come pretty far already, too.