If you read this blog post, you’ll know I recently started cosmetology school. Since starting I’ve received a bunch of messages on I
I first wanted to start with my background since I did get a few questions on that. I have mentioned this before so for those of you who already know my background with school and college you can skip this paragraph. So basically I never liked school, got below average grades my entire school career and then ended up graduating high school the summer after I was supposed to(because I had to go to summer school). I then decided to take a year off school and “figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” First of all, no one can figure out what they want to do forever in one year and thats all I have to say on that. Then I went to community college for general studies and took extremely easy classes so I could get my grades up to transfer to a better school. After a year at community college I realized I didn’t like it at all so I applied to one school that I was super passionate about and got rejected. Which in the long run I am extremely grateful I was rejected because I hear so many awful stories about that school. Luckily, the University at Buffalo had rolling admissions so I last minute applied for Business Management with a concentration in marketing and a minor in media studies. I honestly did zero research into this program but I knew I wanted to do social media marketing so it sounded like the right thing for me. After a year of that I realized that program was a lot more business and economics based than I was excepting. Which led me to get terrible grades because I didn’t like any of my classes. I sorta panicked and switched my major to math education and thought I wanted to be a math teacher and then VERY quickly found that wasn’t for me either. Thats when I switched to my final major, communications. This is probably the major I should have started with because the classes were more of what I wanted to do. Unfortunately my grades were so bad at that point that I could no longer receive finical aid and that was one of the biggest reasons I dropped out. There were a ton of factors that lead into my decision. Another big one is that I felt like I could do what I wanted without a college degree and without being in debt my entire life. And this led me to BEAUTY SCHOOL.
I want to start off by saying, although my choice was very scary and one of the hardest things I had to do, I’m very happy with it. So I currently am in the cosmetology program at The Salon Professional Academy(TSPA). TSPA is all over the country and very well known. For my buffalo guys and gals, there are a couple of other schools in the area that offer cosmetology programs. I know one of them is shutting down due to the fact that they can’t get students because TSPA is so popular. So basically I think this is your best option for Buffalo specifically.
One of the most frequent questions I got was about cost of attendance. The pricing will be slightly different depending on what program you’re in. All of the pricing information is on their website but my cost was about 18k. But you can receive finical aid and for me, I don’t have to pay anything out of pocket. I will have to pay some of my loans back but it’s not nearly as much as it would have been if I stayed at UB. And if you cant receive financial aids they also have payment plans. I don’t know too much about the payment plans but you can go over this with admissions before officially applying.
Going off that and the types of programs, I also was asked how long it takes to finish. The program I am in is part time day, but they also offer part time evening and full time. For part time day it is 14 months so I will graduate March of 2020. It is a very long time but with the hours for full time, it just wouldn’t work for me. I believe the hours do change a bit throughout the year but so you have an idea my hours are 9am-12:30pm, Monday-Friday. The full time program is 8 months but the typical hours for that are 9am-5pm, Monday-Friday and I don’t know about you, but thats a lot for me. So although it will take me a long time to finish, I would rather do it this way so I can still work and have a social life.
A question I got that I really had to think about was “what is the toughest part of your career change?” After thinking about this for a while I realized it would probably be the fear of the unknown. I get super in my head about what-ifs and if I should have just stuck it out with college and what would of happened if I did it differently. So the hardest part is accepting that everything happens for a reason and that I will be okay no matter what.
This wasn’t a question but it is something I hear a lot as a misconception about beauty school. A lot of people assume it’s super easy and all you do is play with hair. Let me be the first to tell you it is definitely not. The way it works is the first half of the program, you’re mostly in the classroom learning the basics but this includes chemistry and anatomy. For someone who isn’t a fan of a typical school setting and doesn’t do well in these types of classes(me), this is pretty hard. Don’t get me wrong, there are days where we’re doing each other’s nails or just sitting around talking about random things but the tests and work don’t come easy. It looks so easy to do some of the things your hairstylist does on you, but A LOT more goes into it. So don’t do this because you think it’ll be a breeze because it will not.
I know I didn’t address too many points but I am only in my fourth month so its still a little new to me. I definitely plan on doing another post of a full review on hair school when I’m graduated! But if you ever have questions before then please leave a comment or message me on instagram!
xx,
Liv