get my cosmetology license

Well, I finished school on December 16th, 2008! Woo-hoo! I am supposed to be at State Board taking my test right now (litereally, right now,) but one of my other goals has overlapped this one, making it a bad time. I am currently 7 – 8 weeks pregnant, and suffereing from severe nausea!!! I am okay if I eat something about every hour to 1.5 hours, which I can’t really do at State Board, and I have to tinkle a lot more often that I used to, on top of being just generally exhausted. Taking a 4 hour test on my feet is just not doable right now. So, as soon as this part of the pregnancy eases up (please God, don’t let me be one of those people who are sick the entire time…) I will go reapply to take my test. I am really glad that I finally got to go to school for this, it is something I have wanted to do my entire life. With the economy in it’s current state, I would be crazy to change jobs right now, so I will be staying put. I plan on applying my licenses (Cosmetology once I get to take my test, and Esthetician, which I already have) by doing special events hair and makeup. Weddings, proms, for photography, etc. I did a contract job in May of last year and got paid $85/hour to do makeup on some lawyers for their promotional pictures. Not too shabby. It is mostly seasonal, and you can make a nice chunk of change in one day. Later on I may at some point work in a salon, but I really feel like contract work is where it will be at for me, unless I own the salon myself.

Woo-hoo! I got certified in Japanese Straightening yesterday! My model was thrilled with her new straight hair, and was actually giddy while I was drying her hair. It took 5 hours and was very tedious, but totally satisfying. I am so glad I finally feel like I got to learn something that I didn’t already know how to do. Nice that it is such a big ticket item as well – I paid $700 to have my hair done about 4 years ago, and another girl in the class paid $2K. Freakin awesome.

37 weeks. That is about how much longer I have to finish cosmetology school at this current rate of 24 hours per week. Going M-Th, 5-9PM, Saturday from 8:30-5PM. Working full time as well from 7-4. It’s brutal. The program is 1600 hours long, but since I have already gotten my Esthetician license, I get 390 hours of credit, which I am soooooooo so so thankful for. The Esthi program was much more action packed and informative than this program is. I feel like it is literally sucking the life out of me. We have 1 hour of theory per day, the rest of it is spent on the floor, serving clients, or working on each other or our doll heads. This is really frustrating. We have to get a teacher consult before starting, and often times it takes a good 10 minutes to get someone over. I mean, I know that people are coming to a beauty school and therefore aren’t expecting prefection, but still – it makes me feel like we are providing horrible customer service, and I don’t like that. Just because we are at a school doesn’t mean that we can slack. Half the time I am working on something on my doll hear I get interrupted to do something else, and I never get to complete something to the point of getting it signed off on my assignment sheet. I have 10 pages of assignments that I have to get signed off before graduating. I completed my freshmen and sophomore ones fine, but my senior sheet is seriously lacking. I think I have maybe 6 or 7 assignments signed off. There are about 20 assignments on each page, so you do the math. Anyway – I want to get done SOOOOOOO bad, but I am exhausted, and it is hard to stay motivated sometimes. I don’t even have the option of getting 8 hours of sleep – there aren’t 8 hours between the time I get home and have to get up for work the next day. My husband is the best most supportive and understanding person on the face of the planet, and is taking very good care of himself, and does litte things for me every day like make the bed and turn on my side of the electric blanket before I get home so the bead is all toasty, and brings me a glass of ice water with a bendy straw every night. I only get to see him for about a half an hour before we go to bed, and he stops whatever he is doing as soon as I get home so we can hang before going to bed. Then he puts our cat to bed while I am doing my usualy evening bathroom routine (washing face, brushing teeth, putting in my ever so glamorous retainer) so he isn’t in my way. Then we go to bed and he talks to me until I fall asleep. He also takes me out to dinner every Friday night so that we get a date night, and so that I don’t have to think about cooking anything just because I am home. He makes sure we have quick healthy munchies in the house (baby carrots, celery sticks, grab and go salads) since he doesn’t know how to cook, and I never get to anymore. Best. Guy. Ever. I just want to be home with my husband. I just want to be done with school so we can hopefully get our family started. One of the big reasons I want to go into this profession (besides the fact that I have wanted to do this since high school) is so that I can be home in the mornings to get everyone off to school and work, and can be a lot more in control of my own schedule and work around my life, instead of living around my work. Just want to get the show on the road. Okay, I think my rant just helped me get a little motivated. I guess i just needed to remind myself of why I am doing this to myself right now. Good.

I have already gotten my Esthetician license, now I am working on Cosmo. Have about 600 hours in, only 1000 more to go – ugh. Working full-time and going to school part time. Feels like it is taking forever.