Personal Narrative: My Hair Before And After High School

If you told me 5 years ago that I would be taking the plunge to go to Paul Mitchell: The School, I would probably give you a puzzled look and continue slicing the raw meat on the table in front of me. I’ve held many professions--from butcher to tech support, and I never really expected things to take a turn in this direction. What started out as touching up roots and using the hashtag “#hairbyben” on instagram as a joke turned into something more profound and I made the discovery that changed my life. I realized that hair was something I could see myself doing, the only problem was I couldn’t see where I would gain the knowledge to be successful. Luckily, I stumbled upon Paul Mitchell: The School in Fort Myers.

I had long, curly hair in elementary school and was very attached to it. My hair was how most people would identify me, but one day while my sister was babysitting I got lice from one of the children. After finding that out my mom was forced to shave my head. Many children were unimaginably cruel to me because I had to wrap my head in a bandana. While presenting in front of the class one day someone ran up and pulled it off my head; that incident brought on one of the most embarrassing times in my life. Having to deal with constant bullying started to turn me into a very angry person. Instead of crying when I was made fun of I would fight the person making fun of me. Having to deal with the constant torture from others at a young age made

In case you don’t know what dreads are, they are a hairstyle that looks like long noodles going down you head. Mines were very long, they went to my shoulders. At the time my mom was very poor, she was raising my five brothers and me. I am the middle child. I have two older brothers and two younger brothers. My mom was poor so I would never get my hair re-done on time. It would take me about a month late before I would get my hair done again. You could imagine how ridiculous I looked. When my hair looked ridiculous, I mean my hair looked ridiculous. My hair looked so frizzy. It looked like I had been electrocuted before school. Luckily, I had dreads because if I had any other hairstyle it would have been a lot worse. After you keep getting you dreads done for a while they would lock which means they couldn’t be unlocked after which means when I didn’t want them anymore I would have to cut them off with scissors and grow my hair back out all over again. Every time I got to school I would see people laughing at me and I was wondering why they were laughing at me. One day someone came up to me with her friends and would bully me and talk about my hair how ugly it looked and I had nothing to day but be sad about

Snip! Snip! You hear that? That’s the noise I will be making within the next two years. It’s a fact. This class has helped me realize that I have been off course now for about two years. Generally, I wanted to be a nurse and that’s the pathway I was following, until now. I realized while taking the ACA 090 class that I was following the nursing path for all the WRONG reasons, which was for one: money and two: because my mom has always pushed nursing….always. In other words, I was way off course. As I sat in the cosmetology department at our school, my heart grew fond of it and then my view on my education changed tremendously. As you read this paper, I will tell you about me finding my way to the light at the end of this tunnel I was traveling! Enjoy!

I have always enjoyed helping people who are less fortunate. I am the type of person who volunteers to read to children who are alone during certain holidays. But one specific even completely changed how I want to help people. In June 2011, I moved back to Colorado and decided to pursue a career in cosmetology. It was a lot of fun and I definitely had a knack for it, but I always felt like something was missing. To me, it honestly started to get kind of boring but I continued my education and continued to thrive in my success as a Paul Mitchell Cosmetology Student. On Feburary 3rd 2012 I had a very important cutting assessment, and it would also be the day I got an emergency called that changed everything. I got an emergency call during my

Have you ever been through a journey faced with complications that lead you through frequent steps that can occasionally make you want to give up? I decided to do my capstone project on The Journey of Natural Hair, mainly focusing on the selections of afro-textured portions throughout my project. A journey of natural hair is a route you take along with your hair as you encounter different changes and ideas pertaining to your hair. The Natural hair journey technically starts when you are born because everyone is born with different varieties of natural hair. My reason for choosing such a topic is because it is something I can relate to. I have also experienced many of the common stages along my natural hair journey. This topic stands out to me and is something I enjoy talking and learning about. I understand that many aren’t able to self-experience a journey of natural curls which varies with race and background. Exposures to chemicals such as hair relaxers can permanently change the texture of the relaxed portion of hair. As I research further into my subject I hope to learn how certain things can manipulate the hair. I also seek to learn new things the journey has prepared as it continues step by step. I can achieve this by gaining more knowledge about natural/afro-textured hair through others experiences and studies on it.

When I was 10- 12 years old I begged my mother to let me get a perm. She denied my request daily. On my 13th birthday she took me to the beauty shop and told me, I was getting a perm. I screamed so loud. You would’ve thought I had won the lottery. The reason why I wanted a perm was because every one of my friends at my school had one too. After a year or so of having a perm and getting them touched up, I told my mom that my hair started to come out. She instantly decided to let the perm grow out and stop there. I then started doing them myself the older I got, until one day my hair started to fall out again. I started doing research on healthy hair for black women. I came across articles about other women hair falling out because of perms. I started to notice my hair was so uneven and different textures and such, I became so intrigued in the topic I decided to do study this more seriously. It almost was my after school job. My junior year of high school, I decided to perform the “big chop” on my hair. Which is where a woman cuts out all of the damage hair and start from scratch. My friends turned on me, and I was an outsider for that next year. But I had the support of my family. I stuck with it from then to present day. This item represents my adolescence because it taught me so much about myself, which has still been a leading cause in my life even now. I have been natural since 2009 and I do not regret my decision at

So I took them off and set them down and then you pick the pair you want off the plastic pages and then they take them and put them in this press thing and then they're all good and you put them on by just putting them on the place on your back, and this time they sorta snapped in somehow, and then they're all good. I wanted to change my hair too, I forget what mine looked like but it was fairy hair so it changed as soon as the fairy guy turned me into a fairy. So I wanted this long wavy look but I didn't want brown. They only had select styles and colors and you could mix and match and put another color with one. There was only about 6 to choose from. There was a pink pony tail. A long waxy brown. A brown ponytail. Something teal. And a

Growing up I always use to like doing my hair, as well as my mothers and sisters hair. I began to do my own hair for school at the age of nine. About six months before I graduated high school, I participated in a fundraiser to support breast cancer /scholarship contest at Aveda Institute, which is a cosmetology school. I saw many creative and talented students at the event, it was amazing! I assumed it was a sign, so as soon as I graduated high school I registered at Aveda. I truly believed that cosmetology was what I wanted to make a career out of, because I enjoy making people feel more confident about their physical appearance. However, attending the institute emphatically demonstrated a sneak preview of what life had in store for me.

Don't ask what business an Indian girl with my hair had getting a white American pageboy 'do. It was wrong, I realize that now. But I remember after getting that cut, my hair began to freely express her emotions and moods. It was like she had woken from a long, deep slumber. Maybe it was the shorter length, maybe it was a natural development phase. It's not clear why she chose to stage her debut at that point. But one thing was clear, she was not going to do whatever I wanted her to.

I'd like to say that I’m not the only teenager who thinks they have it all figured out by the time they’re in high school. Growing up in what I believe is probably the smallest town in Westchester, what’s "best" means: what everyone else is doing. So naturally, it wasn’t until I was going into my senior year that I realized - I may not have it all figured out.

I always grew up a bad kid, making my mom mad, sad, and having no idea what to do with me. When I was around 3 I decided it would be a really smart idea to “clean” our front rooms carpet. Thinking that laundry detergent cleaned everything, I figured it would work on carpet. I put that thought to the test when I decided to grab some powdered detergent and sprinkle the whole thing on my front rooms carpet, and then dump tons of water all over it. While I’m still not sure how I ended up getting away with this, I did anyways.

Sophomore year of high school, I heard about the cosmetology program. I was admitted and always aced the tests without much effort, I didn’t feel challenged nor did I feel the topics I was learning about were rewarding. It quickly became stale to me and I realized it was not the path I was destine to walk. Even though I was leaving school early to attend cosmetology, I would much rather be in a science class that challenged me than ace all my tests about hair. I knew it was not for me and I could use my intelligence for more.

Today i'm going to be writing about how I want to grow up and do hair. When I was was about 11 or 12 my moms friend gave me a mannequin head. I would always play with it and do braids in it and stuff for practice. When I would have left over extinctions I would try to put it in my mannequin head and it didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would lol. My mom actually has a picture of me doing braids in my mannequins head.

They huddled close, stared at me, and whispered to each other. One of them stood, came to me, and plucked a few long dark hairs off my head that fell to my lower back. She obnoxiously laughed and her devious minions laughed along. She looked at me telling me that my hair is dirty because it’s long. She made a twisted, dissatisfied look on her face. As a 7 year old, I was gullible enough to believe her since they had nice short hair and mines long and always tangled. I convinced my mom to cut it. After the haircut, I waited until they approved, but I never got one. Now that I’m older, I understood what happened but I could never forget it. A song started to play and reminded me of that time. The soothing song was “Try” by Colbie Caillat. With this song, Caillat reassures her viewers that they are naturally beautiful by joining a society who struggle with their insecurities.