Cosmetology school might not be what you think it is. This student explains her experience and what she wasn’t expecting from cosmetology school.

What you need to know about cosmetology school

In this article, we learn what a cosmetology trade school student wishes they knew before enrolling and we learn a few pointers and things you should know to get an idea if you think cosmetology school is right for you.

This student went to the Aveda Institute in North Carolina for a 1 year program and completed her 1500 hours. Her schedule was from 9 am – 8pm and then 8am – 7pm on thursdays fridays and saturdays.

Drama

At first she was really excited to make friends and to meet other people who were interested in her industry. But she soon realized that there was a lot of drama in cosmetology school.

“You can’t stick 10 girls in a room together and expect there not to be drama, however I had the most drama with a boy in my class.”

There are boys and girls in the classes but still the drama get real, real fast. If you don;t experience drama yourself you’ll definitely see it because school is very competitive. Part of the drama is because there are people of all ages, races, genders and age groups as well. So cultural differences come into play. 

Competition and jealousy

Different people will be doing different things to get clients and boost their social media or they’ll have different ways of gaining clients and everyone tries to learn from each other but people also go behind each other’s back. They’ll steal techniques or just try to rip you off or take you clients so there is a lot of competition and jealousy.

“You’re there to further yourself and your career”

You will make friends but you should remember that you are in cosmetology school to grow your career and to better yourself. If you make friends your first priority you’ll fall behind and you won’t have the success you’ll need. You are paying money to be at school, to get your education, and to get your cosmetology license, so stay focused. 

Don’t just get by

Some students will do the bare minimum just to get by and to get the grade and on certain days they would move appointments and take longer breaks and just slack off. She recommends going into class every day full of energy and treating every day like it’s the most important day of your life.You should expect to skip lunch and breaks. Don’t cancel on clients and don’t slack off. You are paying for this experience so make the most out of it. 

Customer service. 

You will not please all of your clients. Some people just won’t be happy with anything. Some clients will be very difficult to deal with. Some clients will have different hair that is really hard to work with. Don’t stress out too much about clients and how they act. You can;t please everyone so just don’t worry too much about it. As a student you will be learning a lot and your clients are people you are practicing on so don’t let it get you down if there is a client that doesn’t like their hair. 

Did you learn how to do make up?

This student says that she gets asked all of the time if she learned a lot of makeup and she says that truthfully her particular class only focused about two weeks on makeup and it really wasn’t the main focus. 

“If you’re looking to do makeup you should look more towards a makeup academy, or make sure your school focuses on makeup.”

She goes on to mention that Aveda is also a very “natural” brand so it’s no surprise that they didn’t learn full coverage makeup and that the main focus wasn’t on the makeup.

In her experience cosmetology was more about becoming a hair stylist and not makeup. Fortunately she watched a lot of makeup tutorials and learned how to do makeup. 

“You’re going to learn a lot after cosmetology school as well. Shadowing people, taking some extra classes, dealing with clients, doing your own research online.”

In cosmetology school you learn a lot of basics and you set a foundation for the rest of your career but you also learn a lot afterwards when you start experiencing real life work.Just like in any profession the real learning comes from experience.

It’s never too early to start branding

This student emphasises that you should start your social media accounts and personal brand as soon as possible. She attributes a lot of her success to getting her brand started as early as possible. 

“The reason I have so many clients is because I started instagram as soon as I started school and just posted non-stop”

It’s really easy to take awesome pictures of your work and the people your work with. There is so much good content that can come out of school and your work like and you should show that off. 

Separate your business from your friends

Your friends will think that you will give them haircuts and colors etc for free and you really shouldn’t. What happens is that they tell their friends and suddenly everyone wants free or discounted haircuts and it becomes a bad thing. In the end it can create a lot of trouble with your friendships. If you are giving people discounts just make sure they don’t tell other people about the discounts.

It’s not going to be easy

She says that things aren’t going to be easy. A lot of people go to cosmetology school because they think it will be easy and fun but that’s not the case. It’s actually really challenging and stressful and if you don’t absolutely 100% love cosmetology and have a passion for it, then you’re going to have a terrible time. 

“There were probably 30 people in my class, about 18 graduated, and about 5 are still in the profession. Make sure it’s going to be your passion!”

These are just the things that people don;t tell you before cosmetology school and this isn’t meant to be negative at all because school is really great for you career and it sets the foundations for your success. 

Remember this is just this one students personal experience with a very specific school so not all cosmetology trade schools are like this.