Well it's official...I am a beauty school graduate! I finished my hours on Monday and signed up for the state board exam for the end of February. So now it's time to go back to the real world where I get to work and make money every day. It's been a nice break but I've missed having an income to waste on the frivolities of life. I'm assisting a girl in making dresses for the runway show at a hair convention in Vegas. I'm hoping this will lead me to some amazing job. This week I've felt anything but pleasant from stressing over my next career move. I'm breaking out in rashes and my skin is horrible. I don't sleep at night sometimes and I've been having dreams about weird stuff--for example I had a dream that No Doubt was playing at a work party and they wanted to audition a new singer. All of my coworkers and I wanted to try but the only songs I knew were Gwen Stefani. Either I've been watching too much of The Office or I am a closet Gwen fan--or maybe both?

So my friend at work told me that she was walking on campus the other day when she heard a girl talking on her phone. The girl said something about Paul Mitchell so my friend listened in. This is what she heard. "Ya get Tracy... I don't know! I don't care what her number is just request her! She did my hair and she's GOOD. You HAVE to get HER... I'm telling you! ...Just call Paul Mitchell and ask for Tracy Green... Yes." After weeks of feeling pretty insecure about my abilities due to a chain of events that I won't go in to, I have to say that makes me feel pretty awesome.

Today was 'ugly Christmas Sweater' day. It was soooo awesome. We all wore the ugliest Christmas sweater that we could find and had to act like it was no big deal when our clients came in. We weren't supposed to let them in on the joke but I couldn't help myself when this ultra chic client of mine came in. I was wearing a red sweatshirt with Christmas teddy bears surrounded in puffy paint. Oh the mutiny! I couldn't bare anyone in the world thinking I would wear such an atrocious beast on purpose. So when she asked if we were having some kind of a Christmas themed day, I let her in on the secret. One of the students actually complimented all of us on our sweaters and said she thought they were all cute and would actually like wearing one. There are just all kinds in the world...

I'm sorry my blog has been so boring. I just read back and wow--booooring.
I forgot to write this the other day. MJF came to teach a class the other day for the first time in months. I was sitting in the back near this girl and she leaned over and said, "Hey, don't you think he looks like Michael J Fox?" I froze--had she found my blog? Did she know everything I've written??? Had I written something about her? UH OH. So instead of giving myself up I started to ask her questions, "Have we talked about this before?" etc. After probing and discussing things I too realized as she had, MJF was wearing this one jacket that day and his hair was cut a different way and well, he really looked like Marty Mcfly more than ever. I felt a certain connection to my friend because she was the first person to see what I have seen all along.

Perms, perms, and more perms.
I had to perm this lady's hair the other day--she wanted a really tight curl so we used the white and grey rods for a spiral perm--fun. I was trying really hard to look at her in the eye during the consultation but it was painful because it was full of blood. Ya, ew. I didn't say anything about it but as I put the cape and towel on her she said, oh sorry about my eye, I poked it with a needle the other day. (what?) She wasn't sure how she had done it--she was walking down the hall and just poked herself in the eye. It was so hard to act like it wasn't a big deal and that I had people come in all of the time with bloody eyes from accidentaly poking themselves with needles. Then it was butts up when we went to rinse out her hair--she couldn't handle laying back with her head in the sink so she kneeled on the chair with her back side out in full view for the world...or at least phase two.
The week before I permed this other lady's hair who had dimentia. She repeated herself so many times that I decided to respond differently to each repeat so that I wouldn't feel like groundhogs day...wait that is what Bill Murray did. I really wanted to start saying totally insane things to her because I knew she wouldn't remember but there are other people around that can hear. It was cute because after we put in the perm solution she was so worried about her hair being wet and kept telling me that she couldn't leave with it wet. By the time we were finished, it was as if she had forgotten that her hair was wet and was mesmorized by the curls we had made that day. I really think that she forgot she was getting a perm.

This is my school's attempt in getting us excited about selling product. Sex sells baby.

Oh how I love to be a core mentor. Today I got two five minute mini scalp massages and a scalp treatment from the core students. They had to do it for their worksheets so I had to volunteer to be a model. Poor me. ha ha There is one girl that is particularly boy crazy and feels it necessary to remind us during any given topic. For example when the class was asked to name off positive things, most girls were saying things like laughter and puppies. This girl said really hot boys and sexy underwear. Oh and don't worry, she made sure we knew that she was in fact wearing sexy underwear today. Ordinarily this would be extremely obnoxious and irritating to me but she gave me one of the three scalp massages. For all I care, she can name off every color of bra and underwear she has and who has seen them so long as I get a scalp massage out of it.

Today we all fell apart for some reason or another. I think it has to do with women's cycles moving so that they fall at the same time every month. I've experienced this change many times having had so many different roommates and worked closely with many different women. It could be just me because my hormones get so out of wack, but it seems like everyone at school is extra sensitive and on edge at the same time. I think the big cycle migration is complete.
I walked up to a friend who had just finished doing an 'updo' on a guest and she was pissed. I pulled her aside to talk about it and she was so mad that she started crying. Too bad I did the exact same thing when I talked to a learning leader about something that was frustrating me like an hour before this. Awesome. So she was mad because her guest had dandruff really bad. Dandruff is contagious and we've been told a thousand times to send people requesting services away and to a doctor. The learning leader helping her told her to do this girl's hair anyway. She had to cornrow her hair--nothing will get you closer to a scalp than that. Ew. We're hoping that there won't be a dandruff epidemic at the school. I'll keep you posted.

One of my guests today wanted her hair dyed blonder. She demanded that we use color to do this and not bleach. I asked her if her hair had been colored previously and she said yes. Hmm let's see, how do I explain it so that everyone gets how nearly impossible her request was--She wants to get wet without using water? She wants to climb up stairs without bending her knees? Color can't lift color--at least not the color I was about to use. So I had to give her color class 101 so that she would understand that I had to use bleach to get where she wanted to go. I think she was ok with it. It turned out lovely.

Yesterday in our make up class, Kevin(gay instructor) made an announcement that we were having a make up artist from Ultimate Face come to teach a make up class on Thursday. Kevin rarely talks about his sexual orientation. He never says anything about anyone he's dating and he almost never talks about boys he's attracted to that come in to the salon. He might as well be straight--except that he runs around and dances and acts like a cheerleader most of the time. So when he does say something about boys it's almost shocking but then it's not. It's hard to describe. So we're sitting in class, about 30 of us girls, and he was talking about the guest artist and said,"I heard he is cute and single..." and then he paused for minute and looked at all of us giggling because he knew we were all thinking oh good then hook it up because a man in the beauty industry has a 80% chance of being gay. So he added in an irritated tone,"...and he plays for you guy's team...so good for you."

My cousin couldn't have said it better:

http://thedailykirk.blogs.com/the_daily_kirk/2006/09/luman_walker_gr.html

So I pretty much hate Wednesdays. We're in class ALL DAY long and it's really suffocating. Today during the first hour we had a 'guest speaker'. I say it in quotes because sometimes they actually are a guest speaker and other times they are solicitors: pepper spray vendors, people from banks, magazine clubs, gym membership people, etc. Then on the flip side we've had people share relevant information--I won't go too in to it. Today this guy came in to show us some massage techniques. He pulled out these wands with pokey round things on them that he would roll up and down your back and neck and legs. Some girls chuckled in the corner because it just really looked like, well not a massage toy I mean tool. As he continued on with his presentation I felt like I had been thrown in to the movie Pete's Dragon.

But after he started telling jokes about threesomes and pointing out the kinky nature of the massage tools he was using, I realized that this class was no longer a Disney movie in any way.

FIGHT! We had our first fight at school on Friday!!! And I was right there in the middle of it all! How fantastic is that??? So I'm sitting in class and we were all grouped around these tables. The new Madonna albumn was blairing from the speakers and everyone was talking as each table was deciding what block color to put on their doll head. There were two girls at the end of the table talking about something and they each started slamming their hands down on the table. It was really quite loud and I jumped the first time they did it. The girl next to me is pregnant so she yells hey! stop doing that, you're making the baby kick me in the crotch! One of the girls said Oh I'm sorry! and the other girl said, I'm not. So the pregnant girl looked at her and sneered, what did you say? The other came back at her, Don't talk to me! From there is just got worse. The pregnant girl kept murmuring things to her and the other girl kept saying things like, 'don't talk to me' , 'stop talking to me', or 'you always have to have the last word!' but the 'don't talk to me's' kept getting louder and louder to the point that she was yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs with a crazed look in her eye, 'DON'T TALK TO ME!!!!!!!!' The two girls were starting to stand up out of their chairs and get in to each other's faces when the teacher came over and kicked them out of the class. The rest of us that had been watching the exchange, had just sat there and watched, I think dumbfounded that this was actually happening. The last time I remember seeing a fight in class was in my 7th grade art class. So I guess you have to expect this kind of thing when you let girls leave highschool early.

Today this old lady came in and wanted her hair carrot top orange. I didn't have the pleasure of doing this but this 17 year old girl did. She applied the color and washed it out. Her roots ended up bright orange and her ends a yellow gold. She absolutely loved it. Somewhere in the service she told the student working on her, that if the student didn't wear lipstick, she would never get married. The wounded non lipstick wearing student crawled to the back of the clinic floor while the woman was under a dryer and told a couple of the instructors the tragic news that she would now need to wear lipstick. So they ran back and grabbed the school make up kit and this girl and one of the instructors put on bright nasty red and pink lipstick in defiance. Maybe you had to be there but it was pretty funny to watch them go back over to the client in all seriousness and finish out the service without cracking a smile.

They keep telling us that it's not how well you can do hair but how well you are with people. Creating good realtionships with people is what is going to keep them coming back in, not the fact that you gave them a good haircut. I can't imagine going back to someone that made me look like a crack whore no matter how I felt about them. Unless of course I wanted to look like a crack whore. I never thought I would want a rocker mullet and well here I am.

Whoa it's been forever since I've written. I'm having a hard time having a conversation with people I don't know this week. I think I've just been too tired to care for several reasons. I really don't care how many brothers and sisters they have or where they are from or where they work or go to school. I want them to just sit down and tell me fun stories like they entered a hot dog eating contest or how they rolled around in the mud in their church clothes. Most importantly, it's hard when you can't really hear what the person is saying because it's sooo loud in the school and it's hard to concentrate on the haircut if I'm chatting away. I need to find a balance or maybe I just need to get some sleep so I can be more alert.

We had a class on extensions today. This girl that came to teach had a thick Utah accent and a big coiffe of hair to go along with it. She claimed to do her hair different everyday--big and curled like today, straight, wavy, what have you. I am curious to see what she looks like with straight hair. Flat ironing hair is kind of a newer concept around here and somehow the Utah folks haven't quite completely grasped the idea. I really didn't know that straight hair could be manipulated into looking big but Utah has found a way through a little thing called back combing. There is one girl at school that has what we call the Utah poof. I had seen her go through her little hair styling ritual but in different parts, never all at once so I didn't really fully understand the process. It wasn't until I watched her style someone else's hair that I truly got how she did it. She starts by round brushing her hair with the largest size round brush. She then back combs all the areas she wants to have volume. Next comes the hairspray and finally the flat iron. She is able to have board straight hair that has an incredible amount of volume at the scalp. I would have to say that this girl has mastered the process. I have seen many other girls who try to achieve the same affect but fail massively. Their results are a ratted mess at the scalp with strings of hair trying to cover it. My personal favorite is when they try to have volume all around their head instead of just at the crown: it just looks like they have two horns coming out of the side of their head because they don't tease the back crown area enough. Ha Ha suckas!

Clocking In.
So we have to clock in and out in order to get credit for the hours we are at school. We were all assigned a number that corresponds to a card that we can punch in and out when we come and go. They decided to change things up a bit since there is a problem with students clocking each other in and out, getting each other hours for time they aren't actually there. We now use our hand print as our sign in. There is a machine with a hand print and we punch in a number and place our hand on the hand. This is not a time saving mechanism by any means. It now takes about ten minutes to clock in because we have to wait in line to get our hands scanned. You would think that we were working in some kind of a secret branch of the CIA. Once I scanned my hand, I was waiting for a hidden door to open that would lead down a long hallway to a series of other identification tests such as, say an eye scan. Perhaps we would be doing make up and hair for all of the agents that need to have an Alias for their secret missions. Oh maybe I would get to meet Jennifer Garner! But to my dismay, nothing happened and all that was waiting for me was class.

I'm starting to have mini panic attacks on where to go when I'm done with school. Do I stay here or do I move home or somewhere else? I don't know. I think about it constantly since I'm now in the last half of school. I happened to catch part of the show "Blow Out" on Bravo today and it totally stressed me out. The owner/manager Jonathan sat all of his employees down and basically threatened to fire all of them. The next day he cried and told them all that he didn't want to lose any of them. Then his assistant wanted to graduate to her own chair and she had to do a male haircut. So Jonathan said that he would cut one side of the guy's hair and she had to cut it exactly like he did on the other side. As she was cutting, he kept stopping her and correcting her every move. All I could think was oh crap she's totally not going to pass the test at this rate! Miraculously she did pass the test and graduated to a stylist. (She looked so unenthusiastic about it!) So I guess I was stressed out thinking about where I may end up and how I don't want to end up with a boss like that guy--so wishy washy and up and down. I don't want to be too picky about the salon I end up in but I want to like it! I can't write anymore--the ulcers are forming.

We had a class on resumes and interviews today. We asked each other mock interview questions. One that I got was, "What was your biggest challenge in school?" I couldn't think of anything. The girl asked me, "Well did you have any crazy color corrections or anything like that?" I said, "No...so far everything has gone great!" So then this afternoon I was doing my friend's hair. She had really light hair (level 9ish) and she wanted some highlights but she didn't want any bleach on it as her hair is very fine. So I used an HLP which is a highlift platinum with 30 volume. As I was applying it she asked if I had ever done someone's hair and they hated it. I said no and that so far everyone had liked what I had done. As I was taking out the foils in her hair at the sink, I noticed that the strands were looking a bit silver and purple. I kind of panicked but just hoped it was the color and it would rinse away. It didn't. I thought, oh no here it is...my biggest challenge in school and a client who would probably walk away hating their hair. I grabbed my instructor and we ended up counteracting the purple with a yellow toner and 5 volume. Magically the purple and silver dissappeared and her hair was a gorgeous blond. She loved it!
So word travelled fast around the school that I had turned someone's hair silver/purple. It is a rare instance to have to tone out purple. Usually we end up having to tone out orange or yellow. I am guessing that her hair didn't have the usual orange or yellow pigment that hair normally has. The highlift has a lot of purple in it to counteract those colors so if there is nothing to counteract, voila! purple!