Nail School - Day 5 - Summary of Week One

Yesterday was my fifth day of nail school and I'm happy to say that I've completed 1 out of 8 weeks. On Friday the only notable thing that happened was that the waxing students practiced on my legs, so now my legs are silky smooth from being waxed! Which is much better than the ultra hairy-ness that always seems to happen in winter. They were pretty good! At least, I think... I never had my legs waxed before.

Here are my overall thoughts on the first week. I think that this program is really inefficient and I'm disappointed that it is so easy. I knew that signing up for this would be completely different from my university experiences, but I really didn't anticipate it being this bad. I use the word bad for a lack of a better word, but I want to be clear that I don't think nail school is "bad," I'm just surprised at how it is run. I'm a firm believer that the harder school is, the more you learn, so I'm concerned (at this point) that I won't learn everything I need to know by the time I graduate. And I'm not saying that I won't pass the mandatory state exams by the time I graduate, I'm saying that I think I won't be as skilled as I hoped this program would make me. I'm starting off pretty much from zero, I have no idea how to file my nails, I am still not totally sure what a cuticle is, and I kind of stink at polishing my nails (yes, the actual POLISHING). Also, can anyone tell me what the heck the difference between a squoval and a round nail are? They look exactly the same to me! How can I possibly learn all of that by the time this program is over when I feel like I wasted the first week.

After attending this first week, I've decided to make a list of goals that I want to achieve by the end of the program. Let me know if you can think of other things that I have forgotten/

1. First and foremost, I want to get my nail technician license. This is really the only reason I'm taking the class to being with. I want to be able to practice nail art on others as a (sort of) career.

2. I want to be able to shape and file nails so that they are all the same length and shape. This has always been really hard for me. I depend too much on the nail bed and not enough on the length of the entire nail. I also really stink at filing. Once I tried to make my nails square and they were all sorts of crooked and crazy looking.

3. I REALLY want to be able to create obele nails (see picture below). I think that I could do so much awesome nail art on these nails and I have an idea of how to make them more wearable too. I'm also interesting in learning the edge nail, which is a less dramatic version of the obele.

4. I want to have a job opportunity that allows me to do more nail art than the average nail tech. 

5. I want to get faster at nail art so that when I'm doing others nails it isn't too long of a procedure.

6. I want to find out what types of designs other likes and be better at taking requests. I mostly do designs that are on my own nails so I really want to get used to doing nails that I'm not necessarily passionate about myself, but that my client will love.

I'll let you know if/when I achieve any of these goals. I'll continue to blog about nail school and my experiences most days. Luckily, I have Monday off, so I'll be posting more Tuesday. Until then, I'll probably be posting some more nail art!