All throughout my days at school, “State Boards” was the relative euphemism for The Bogeyman. We were trained to fear this test. Everything we did and all the skills we learned and all the methods we were trained to apply were done so in order to appease the dark gods of the State Boards.

“At State Boards they’re going to expect you to roll your perm THIS way”

“Don’t hold your dryer like THAT, or they will flunk you at State Boards”

“Everyone does it -this- way but State Boards prefer you to learn it -this- way”

“Don’t do THAT at State Boards, whatever you DO! They will kill you!”

“If you turn out the lights and look into a mirror, and repeat ‘State Boards’ three times, when the lights turn on you will be denied your cosmetology license and your student loan rates will go up”

I dreaded these exams for the past 12 months to the day. Everyone dreads them, every student fears this day. It keeps us up at night and puts knots in our stomachs. However, as of this moment I will not need to lose sleep over this fateful day any longer. Or at least that SHOULD be the case, however the fact remains that no matter how much I study, how much I prepare or how well I paid attention in school, there is no way to be sure I passed this test. What’s worse – if I failed this test, I will never be told why.

Personally, I feel like I did an amazing job, yet the fact of the matter is that I have a 50-50 chance of failing this test. I get my results in 6-10 days, at which point I’ll know if I can start looking for work, or if I have to spend more money and wait another under-employed month (maybe two) to take the test again. Continue Reading »

(Continued from Part One)

I decided I would take this challenge and make it my own. To me, this was more than just a job training program. I was going to use this environment as a form of life re-training. I seated myself next to the most difficult girl in the class, in order to help me rebuild my patience and to practice stress management. I re-learned my people skills by building an extended rapport with one stranger after another – because a decade of cubicle existence eroded my social skills entirely. Going to a school 99% populated by young women and gay men put me well outside my comfort zone (only to the extent, mind you, that it rendered me the gross minority… lest anyone think I’m uncomfortable around women or gay men!), as did the particular social environment a cosmetology school contains – but I avoided closing myself off to it, or putting up emotional barriers, so that I could expand my resilience and my adaptability.

It’s a start, really, but I feel as though I’ve made some personal progress. I do recognize that this field is one in which you need to be “On” while on the job. By “On” I mean you can’t just settle into your cubicle and tack-tack-tack on your computer until the day is finished. At a salon job you are on your feet both physically AND mentally! Your skills can be the best but you’re not going to make any money if you can’t play your social game up to the nines! Put yourself in the salon chair… who are YOU going to recommend to all your friends? The quiet one who gives you a nice haircut but seems somewhat unapproachable, or are you going to recommend that guy who is personable, funny, friendly, and just exudes confidence? It’s a mental game, and as ridiculous as it may seem, it’s almost MORE important for me to put on the “walking-party” mindset than to focus on my actual skills. Continue Reading »

20 Years ago (give or take) I was fairly destitute. No prospects and no particular aim. I had a minimum wage job that barely kept me fed and sheltered, and did nothing at all for my sense of purpose. I wanted to change things, get a little more direction, get something better. So I reflected on what I had done that I found enjoyable, what would I want to be “when I grow up.” By that point I had done some minor construction and I really enjoyed it, I thought “I’ll bet I would really love to make things, and earn my keep by swinging a hammer.” A good job. A real job. However, I needed training – I had NO idea how to get from “A” to “B.” So I made an appointment with a counselor at the Department of Labor, thinking they could set me on the right path to becoming a carpenter.

“I can’t help you.” I was stunned, not five minutes after sitting at the counselor’s desk I had all the wind taken out of my sails. “We don’t have a shortage of carpenters in the area, so I can’t help you. Have you got anything else?” Anything else? This was my result of soul-searching, thoughts and reflections on the dreams for the rest of my life (or at least the next 30 years). I didn’t come with a “runner-up” plan in mind. “Think of something else and call us back.” Continue Reading »

We’re now down to hours that I’m counting. I have 10.5 hours of school left, and then I’m graduated. I am graduated and I can officially take the state boards and get licensed… and as of sometime yesterday I’ve completely checked out.

Let me clarify, when I say “checked out” I don’t mean that I’m going to just phone in my last haircuts and dye jobs. No I’m still doing terrific work on all that, what I mean to say is that I’ve given up any and every pretense at behaving myself!

Today is the day I’ve discovered that. I have a bad case of “Senior’ itis” and I feel like making some trouble. Fun trouble. Kevin kinda trouble! Today I walked around to everyone’s station and secretly clicked the little circuit break testing thinger on their hair dryers. I turned the nozzles on everyone’s water bottle to “stream” rather than “mist.” I turned on and turned all the way UP the “End of Cycle” alarms on all the washing machines. I leave the salon floor and just walk into classrooms and disrupt them for no reason at all. I no longer respect the stylist-client boundaries, I walk right up to any stylist in the room and start up a rapport with their client. “You’re a brave lady.” I would say, “She’s actually killed her last three clients. Between you and me? Don’t let her use her razor on you… it won’t end well.”

Everything I’ve done lately is with the express purpose of being a complete stinker. A harmless one, of course, but a stinker all the same.

Tomorrow is my last full day of school, and I’m afraid it will be pretty much the same as today. I think I’ll be replacing the crappy manufactured pop music CD in the “attendance room” stereo with Norwegian death metal. I will talk through the entire morning announcements and then, somewhere in the middle, throw my hands in the air and declare “Done!” and just walk out. I’m going to go up to every student at lunch and ask them for their food.

So now that I’m thinking about it, I believe it would be a very good idea to ask for my letters of recommendation very very EARLY in the day…

Today is the 30th anniversary of the arcade game “Pac Man” being released. To commemorate, Google has a playable version on their home page.

I hesitate to date myself but I remember when Pac man first came to our little neighborhood arcade (well, the game room at a local tourist attraction to be more precise). I had recently become addicted to this new discovery of mine called “arcade games” – an addiction that continues to this day, but my tolerance is higher these days, so I’m more of a functional addict. My favorites, back in 1979, were Star Fire, Sea Wolf, and Gun Fight. Those were the most advanced games in this game room, however, as the brunt of games in there were chain-driven shooting gallery type games and other boardwalk-type non-video games, as well as the ubiquitous pinball. However, the day Pac Man arrived everything changed. Continue Reading »

If you’ll pardon the pun, this list illustrates what it can be like to go to this school. I asked “Emo Teen” to make me a list of the products I needed to buy for next week’s state board mock exam (ie; The Final Practical Exam). Just a simple list, scratched onto some scrap paper was all I needed, however…

…what I received reminds me of why I like Emo Teen.

My girlfriend and I have been fans of sculptor Mark Prent for years. A friend of ours once worked as an apprentice to him and, knowing that we would enjoy his style, had loaned us some videos to watch. We clicked the “Play” button and our jaws dropped. His work is incredibly realistic, darkly imaginitive and profoundly disturbing – and we couldn’t believe that we knew someone who worked for this guy!

After years of admiring him in private (though not SO private – I’ve been linking my blog to his website since Day One), my sculptor girlfriend managed to develop an online rapport with him, and secured us an invitation to his house to meet him and see some of his work. Continue Reading »

Some days it seems like I’ve been here only for three or four months, other days it feels like I’ve always been here. I’ve grown to like school. At first I was really unsure, but I’ve come to enjoy the place. The experiences, the people, the whole routine. It seems odd to feel that way in such a temporary situation, and I’m at the point in my education where I no longer measure my remaining time in months but in weeks, and sometimes even hours. I currently have 230-ish hours left to go, just over seven weeks until I “graduate.” Graduation day seems almost alarmingly close.

I’m looking forward to completing the path I’ve started, to get back into the workforce and start making money again. I hate having to watch every penny and worry about how long, in this economy, those pennies might have to stretch. I miss buying video games and scooter parts, gourmet beers and weekend vacations. I need new clothes, new shoes and a renewed sense of financial stability. I want a new place that I will refer to as “work” and to meet new people I will refer to as “coworkers.” In short, I want to return to adult life.

Continue Reading »

—-Blabbermouth News Link—-

Dear The South,

You lost that war nearly 150 years ago. Get over it. Confederacy Appreciation? Virginia, are you out of your mind? What is it you are commemorating? Something that was distinctly part of Southern culture? Can’t you just commemorate RC Cola and the Wiggly Wiggly and call it a day?

Let me put it to you this way… every time you say something like “The South Will Rise Again” and other pro-Confederacy one-liners, you need to remember that you were, for all practical purposes, a rogue nation whose system of commerce was based on human-trafficking. Kinda like Afghanistan and its opium market… only decidedly more evil.

Yep, we invade countries like you and install puppet governments in place of the old warlord-based neo-feudalistic governments like yours. We would do so because “freedom” is a big thing here in America. You know, Freedom? That word on all your flag-decorated T-shirts and bumper stickers? Irony runs thick in your neck of the woods, doesn’t it?

Rather than glorifying the history that you feel compelled to remind the world of, you should take a play out of Germany’s playbook: Don’t talk about it, pretend it never happened, and outlaw the display of your old flag. Are you really THAT proud of your sordid past? Or are you just that STUPID that you don’t understand how the REST of the developed world view being an abjectly-inhumane Banana Republic as a BAD thing?