Esthetician School [Survival Guide]
You did it! It’s your first day! You’ve received all your supplies and your new iPad. You’re excited and focused on making the best of your time here. If your school is anything like mine your going to start with theory were you learn the about anatomy, watch a lot of demos, and practice on your classmates. There a few things needed to help this time breeze by and most importantly, help you to retain the information.
- Extra Supplies
So, I bought a few extra supplies. One of them was a water bottle. Nothing fancy, just a bottle to hold water and keep it cold all day (bonus if it has encouraging words on it). Also buy some cute stationary pens and notebooks; this will help you stay organized. Lastly and the best thing I bought was an Apple Pencil and a Notes app. You probably don’t need the notes app anymore, but the Apple Pencil helped me highlight my digital book, take notes, and fill in my digital calendar. You will spend a lot of hours in school so make it fun and try to romanticize your experience with nice things.
2. Hours
You have a set amount of hours you must complete in order to take your state board exam. Miss a day at school and you will have to make up those hours, my school had designated days you could come up to the school to study while gaining hours. We also had very rare events you could attend to gain hours. Make sure you keep track of any extra hours you accrue, because occasionally, they won’t add on those hours. If you forget to clock-in tell them immediately, it’s always a pain to get them to correct hours. Once your hours are finally completed, you’ll get to graduate and leave your school days behind you. Just don’t forget to clock-out at the end.
3. Drama
Where there is a group of 3 or more, drama will come. While I know people have stories among peers, my beef was with the education system as a whole. The time you spend in school will give you all the knowledge you need to pass state board and nothing more. If the price for the schooling was a lot cheaper, my expectations would have been a lot lower. There were times were we literally sat around all day, you can even tell our instructors were miss treated. While experiencing drama at aesthetician school is inevitable. Remember why you are there, stay out of drama, learn everything, and pass that exam. Let me tell you about the craziest drama that went down.
4. Tips
So tell me why tips were such a hassle. My school went back and forth with whether we could receive tips. No one especially the clients, didn’t understand why we couldn’t accept tips. Most of us weren’t making any kind of income and those tips bought lunch and gas. In the beginning everyone got tips and it seemed like everything was fine. It only became an issue when allegedly tips were being stolen by the front desk. In the end my school decided that we could accept tips but they must be handed directly to the student. This is exactly why we have virtual tip jars. Shamless plug, but I seriously wish I had this in school. I would have had it in my bag & pulled it out when I was on the floor. At Aveda we had private rooms, but if you don’t there are ways to make them into keychains.
Esthetic school can be more challenging than you imagined. I sincerely wish you the best on this journey. Push through and survive.