Nail School - Day 18

Today was a very average day, I took a test, practiced some wraps, practiced some acrylics, and some tips, and relaxed. Since it was such a typical day, instead of writing about my day I thought I would tell you some of the WORST parts of being in nail school:

1. On any given day, your hands are probably going to be looking gross. One of the other students said today, "It looks like I'm a construction worker not a nail tech!" This is because when you first start working with products like alcohol (which dries out your hands), nail glue (which, when you first start using results in gluing yourself to yourself, or yourself to other nails, or yourself to your fake hand, or worst of all yourself to someone else), nail files (when you get filing too fast, you sometimes catch your own nails), you basically ruin your hands. I have never been a lotion user, but man I sure am now!

2. Other students will perform services on you, and because there is a learning curve, this is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Sometimes you'll get an awesome manicure or pedicure from another student and sometimes you'll leave with jagged and scratched nails. Also, because you're constantly getting services, which means constant buffing, your nails will get thinner. Which really stinks for me because I already have thin nails. I've also heard from senior students (and noticed) that once we get better at acrylics we will be putting them on ourselfs, taking them off, putting them on, taking them off. Now, if you apply and remove acrylic nails properly it isn't a huge deal to change them often, but I know one girl has changed hers like 20 times since she started! That's just crazy! It can't be good to do that, or at least I think it can't.

3. You will waste a lot of time. Being an economist, I'm very concerned with efficiency and unfortunately it is well known that trade schools tend to not be very efficient. I've written about this a lot: How we waste time during the day, how I feel relatively unsupervised, etc. Nail school is only 250 hours in the state of New York. That's not a lot of time, and I wish we were using every single second of it. The testing is also a problem. It is super easy which means that you learn less than if it were really hard.

4. You won't learn anything other than manicures, pedicures, shellac, tips, acrylics, and wraps. I don't know, I think that stinks. When I was applying they boasted about how we would be learning cutting edge techniques which, right now, is heavily sculpted nails and tons of nail art. Why wouldn't we learn this stuff? I guess because we waste so much time.

5. Tensions will be high. Our program is pretty short, so there aren't too many altercations, but there have been some heated arguments. Also, it seems like almost every day a student comes in with a huge new emotional problem. I know that life is hard, but I guess I just feel that when you are at work or at school your home life should be left at home (optimistic, right?).

6. Your back will hurt. It will hurt a lot. I have good posture, and still I can't stop myself from hunching over for good chunks of the day. It's almost impossible to not lean over when you're doing a pedicure or checking to see how you've filed a nail. I am working on my posture more, and I hope it doesn't get worse, but some days it really stinks to go home with a hurt back.

7. You might be allergic to something you didn't know you were allergic to. Or you may have an overexposure allergy. I seem to be having slight reactions to the monomer and polymer mix that is used to create acrylic nails. When I do a lot of filing and the dust lands on the backs of my hands I get a few tiny red dots, but luckily they don't last for more than an hour or so.

All that being said, I love nail school. I love going every single day and performing tons of services. Some days I feel like someone is going to have to drag me out of there in order to get me to leave. I hope that despite all the worst parts of school that it keeps getting better and that when I get into the work force I am happy, healthy, and love my life.