First Drafts

I have done my first haircut on a live person.  Long layers on my classmate.  We will call her "Carol"...  It all started out fairly routine, Carol was real easy going... at first.  Her tone was like "Hey, it's just hair, it will grow back if you screw it up!"  This worked out well because I thrive when there is no pressure whatsoever and failure is an acceptable outcome...  My shampoo skills are improving as I didn't shoot water down her back or accidently spray any customers walking by.  Settled back into my chair I sectioned the hair out and gushed about how much nicer Carol's hair was to work with compared with the mannequin clients I normally butchered.  I meticulously went to work on the back and began to take a 1/2" off of her head of abundant hair.  Of course, what would take a normal stylist 15 minutes took me about an hour as I got lost over and over again.  Alas the back was done and I moved onto the sides.  As I began to make my move, panic seemed to hover and then settle in right on top of Carol.  "What are you doing?"  Carol asked with a notable amount of fear in her voice.  I am pretty sure she said it the same way as if she caught me trying to kidnap her granddaughter at Blockbuster Video.  "Ahhhh, you know, getting ready to cut your sides".   Little did I know in getting into this that apparently cutting the front and sides of a woman's head is a lot bigger deal than cutting the back.  Carol was scared to death that I would mangle her hair and she would have to look at it every morning in the mirror for the next month and come to school pretending that it wasn't awful.  My mind quickly had me remembering the root canal appt I had forgotten about and how I had to leave immediately...  I begrudgingly talked myself into staying after weighing my fear of doing a bad job vs my fear of all the other students making fun of me for chickening out in the middle of a cut.  After some firm back and forth discussion and third party intervention, I was able to proceed and finish the job without scaring Carol into bolting for her car.  Much to my relief neither her nor I cried when I was finished!

Could have been worse Carol!



Carol said I did a good job but that I would starve if I continued at my current speed.  I will be looking to improve as to avoid having to change the name of our future salons from "The Peacock" to

"Two hour Trims".