reflection on updos

I love hair. Obviously. I don't think there are many aspects of hair that I don't like. So much creativity goes into everything that is done. One of my favorite ways of expressing creativity - apart from color - is updos...(updo-ing?)

Thursday was my sister's birthday, as well as my service day. We decided to go out to see Jason Castro at Mohegan Sun that night to celebrate. He's really awesome, by the way, but that's another blog post for another day. Anyways...because it was my service day, and because we were going out to a concert, I decided it would be cool to get a funky updo. So after lunch I asked Morgan, a highly gifted individual, if she would do something cool with my quirky locks, and this is what she came up with. Freakin. Awesome.

Sorry if all the pics seem to be from one angle/side...I had a fascination with the braids. :)

Having lots of different tones in my hair, as well as really randomly placed, chunky blond bits made for a fun canvas to work with. I was totally psyched with the results.

On Wednesday we had a halloween updo competition. Now, I really don't know what a 'halloween-updo' looks like, and honestly, I didn't really care. I did, however, have an updo in mind. There had been an idea - a vision, if you will - rolling around in my brain for a couple of days so I decided to play around with that idea instead of doing...holloweeny stuff...

And here we have my dear Barbara Blonde, modelling this trial-run updo.

I'm old enough to know that time doesn't move slow enough...

It feels like just a couple weeks ago that my class and I reached the fabled '200 HOURS' mark. When an individual reaches 200 hours of training they are allowed to have their friends and family come in to have services done. It's also a little more than half way until we are allowed to take normal people (i.e: walk-ins, scheduled clients, absolute strangers, the bum on the corner) as clients. 450 hours is the next "milestone"

[If any of you are interested in visiting me I strongly encourage you to come in! Let me know a day or two in advance or something tho, but if you're interested in something other than a hair cut I advise you look at the Salon's Menu http://studyhair.com/services.shtml first. I'm more than willing to come help you with something - if I can - outside the Salon to help you save your mula.]

Only three of us have actually taken advantage of that, I brought my mom in for a cut :), the advantage being that we are actually performing services on live individuals that move, talk, and have to go out in public with the hair on their heads instead of being stuffed into plastic bags and then jammed into a locker in a backroom somewhere(not that my seven friends don't enjoy that, then again they don't talk much so I wouldn't know ;) ).

But today I recieved my progress report, a sheet of paper that has on it how many hours you have to date, and how many hours you should have if you came everyday, clocked in on time, didn't clock out for unalotted breaks, and clocked out exactly at 3:00. Somehow...I've reached 300 hours. Not quite sure how that happened so quickly. It really is quite amazing how time goes by so quickly. The older I get, the faster it goes. On one hand this is in my favor - this year of school will go by fast! On the other though....I don't want it to go by so quickly! On the 15th of March the new freshman class will come in and I will graduate to the sophmore class. *un-be-liev-able* I'm 1/4 of the way through and its flown by.

We're currently working on our Floor Exams. These are also known as Practical Tests. We have been given a list of the most popular services performed on the Clinic Floor and are required to do them all in a somewhat timed environment and get a passing grade. This list must be completed before we are allowed to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public. The thing is, they're giving us this exam early. It appears that the teachers feel that the Freshman class of Dec. '09 are ready a bit before the normal time. It also appears the the Freshman class of Dec. '09 do not feel ready before, or maybe even at, the normal time....but we have to do this at some point and none of us are failing, so why not?

Guess you'll be seeing a semi-professional hairstylist on the Floor in a week or two ;)

In The Beginning

The fateful day arrived this Tuesday(12/15/09) and was greeted with some nerves and much anticipation. Monday night I set an alarm on my phone to wake me up at 7:30 (since I've been waking up sometime between 8:15 and 10:00 for the past five months.) Strangely enough as I went to bed that night I felt fine. There were no butterflies in my stomach or tense nerves in any part of my body. Even my brain, which normally runs crazy analyzing and over analyzing and over anticipating was calm and relaxed. The only thing that had me really "worried" was that I didn't know which room to enter when I arrived.

I went to bed with a peace I've only experienced a couple of times, a peace and ease of mind that only comes from God. (Thanks God, I needed that, really)


[This is what it says on the back of our school shirts. Neat huh?]

I slept soundly, though my body was still full of expectancy, but was wide awake come 7:00 a.m. My alarm hasn't gone off yet... I thought groggily as I contemplated just laying in bed, but my nervous system was too pumped and ready to go, so I hopped out of bed and headed to the shower. Surprisingly I was in and out before my alarm (which was now set for 7:15 after I added a Snooze Allowance [ ;) ]) had gone off. Hmmm, I did that really quickly!
It's not that I take long showers, but I do like to just kinda stand in the warm water for a while. But when ones nerves are excited and they know they're in a time crunch miracles can happen :D

My father and I jumped in the car and raced off to the International Institute of Cosmetology(herein after known as International or IIC, or just school). We arrived about 15 minutes earlier than planned. I tried to open both the front and back door and found that they were locked. We waited a little longer until we saw some of the other not-as-new-as-I-am students go in.
It felt odd getting out of the car, in an unfamiliar and strange place, and having my dad drive away with an "I love you" and "goodbye." Now I was on my own.
I walked into a room with stations set up along the entirety of each wall. Each station had a large black gym-like bag, a black and metal case(like what they use in special agent movies), and seven boxes stacked on top of the counters. I was directed to the space the kits with my name on top and took a seat. We were encouraged to take part in the "welcome" continental breakfast - consisting of DD doughnuts and coffee.
We all sat at our stations, quietly sipping our December 2009


We all sat there quietly sipping our very hot coffee as one of the directors explained dress codes and how to clock in and out of school. (It's pretty cool, we each have our own code and there's a machine that reads the length and size of our hands to make sure that someone else isn't clocking us in and out)

As the day progressed we went over all our equipment and mannequins, eventually wetting down one of our SEVEN mannequin heads. (It was really creepy loading them all into the trunk, individually wrapped in clear plastic bags at the end of the day...) That afternoon we learned two ways of sectioning, and how to section each part of those sections.

That awkward first day ended silently as we all packed up our 50 lbs. of new stuff and headed home with stiff backs and aching feet.

Here are some of the goodies I brought home that day :D

These are my Le' Marca hair shears. These are very professional, and very sharp, scissors that I will be using on real people when I reach the mark of 200 hours of training and go from mannequins to humans.

aren't they pretty?

This is one of my two straight razors. Don't worry, I'll be trained properly and have enough mental health so when I get to use them I won't pull a Sweeney Todd...on most people.

This is Jesus (or John the Baptist) my male mannequin. Each mannequin has it's own little punny name on the back of their neck, but this guy has some weird ghetto name that starts with M...but for the life of me I can't remember what it is, but it doesn't matter cause he doesn't look like the name they gave him, so I changed it ;)

Plop went the mannequins, ready for inspection by my family. My dad wanted to sit them in our windows, next to the Christmas window candles, to freak out the neighbors. Oh dad.

all my junk.

My fancy smancy kit.

this is the little emo guy emblem of IIC.