school plus me equals suffering

all the cool kids have a thread for talking about school troubles and now i have one too.

i'm coming up on the end of my second week at cosmetology school and i'm already burnt out. at the end of week one i could pay attention in class, i could stay awake, i understood the material and the practical demonstrations and i was ready to give it my all. now i want to quit. two weeks in. i can't, because i've already poured money into this and my mom would kill me if i dropped out and it'll be worth it if i can live through it, but god, i am falling apart right now.

class itself lasts seven hours, which isn't too bad, i worked longer shifts at my old job. depending on whether we're just taking notes or practicing haircutting/coloring/etc. i may be on my feet a lot of that time, but i did that at my old job too. it gets a little bit harder when you throw in the fact that i have to take the bus to get there, at rush hour traffic times, and it adds about four hours to time not spent at home per day.

the school is very strict. you have to have no lower than 80% grades on a month-by-month basis in order to graduate. if you clock in one minute later than the time class is supposed to start, you're considered tardy--which, considering we have to have this machine thingy scan our fingerprints in order to sign in, and the machine is really faulty, and there's only one, and there's one hallway leading up to it packed with two dozen students when it's time to sign in--you are going to end up being tardy. five minutes past the hour and you aren't allowed to clock in at all. i have no idea if these are Standard Expectations or if they're unusually strict, because i was homeschooled all my life except for two years of community college. and they weren't this strict there, for sure.

so far my grades are pretty good, but i've been deteriorating fast. it hasn't shown up in my work yet, but today i watched the instructor demonstrating how to do a particular kind of foiling highlight, and the concept was really pretty simple, and i just. could not understand it. i've been scribbling down notes by just forcing myself to write letters. the letters don't translate to words in my head, because i can't focus long enough to make that happen. the other day my alarm went off, and i got up, went to make some breakfast, and fell asleep for three hours. i'm dozing off all the time, which is really fucking unusual for me, that never happens. we have to take a test tomorrow and i'm trying to study but the words are just vague meaningless blobs, nothing about reading them helps me understand the concepts they're describing. whenever we do anything practical, i am always the last person done. always. always. by a fairly significant amount. even though i'm trying my hardest to work fast, it takes me forever to get anything done.

Extra Funtime Bonus: there are a lot of people at this school who are very, very competent at doing their own hair and makeup and can make a dress code of all solid black work for them, and are looking sharp every single day. i am not one of them. the people who can manage that will not hesitate to make you feel bad if you can't.

should i expect that i'll adjust better to this as i stay there? how do i deal with it while i'm adjusting? it only took two weeks for me to fall to absolute fucking pieces. how does one study for tests because i don't remember. help.

edit: this is probably not very coherent but i'm about to go to sleep and i can't make words happen right.

 

That is ridiculously strict. I went to boot-camp-style police academy and they were not that strict--you had to be present in first formation, but they always gave us a couple minutes' time to form up before the instructor came out. Fingerprint scanners sounds insane.

 

pats are accepted, thank you :')

beauty school is very Srs Bsns, apparently.

yeah, i'm hoping i'll get more used to it when i'm there longer. it's really difficult right now.

i....can't actually say for sure, because the school offers two different programs, and i'm taking both of them, and i think there's a point at which one program leads naturally into the other (the program i'm doing right now is the general cosmetology program, and the second program is the makeup artist program; there's a makeup section in the cosmetology program and i think you sort of transition from one to the other if you're doing both?) my guess is doing both the programs will take a little under a year and a half.

 

i almost fell apart at school today.

we had to practice doing shampoo/blowdrying/styling on a real person, since it's hard to practice doing that on a mannequin head, so we teamed up with classmates and practiced on each other. it was scary for me right off the bat because someone shampooing/blowdrying/styling my hair equals person i don't know touching me. i cut my own hair for years for a multitude of reasons, but 'don't want hairdresser touching me' was pretty high on the list. every time my classmate touched me i flinched--i tried not to, because it made her think she was hurting me even though i kind of tried to explain it's an involuntary reaction and she's not doing anything wrong, but she ended up having to just warn me before she touched me so i wouldn't flinch away and mess her up.

and then when it came time for me to do her hair i was just a shaky wreck. she tried to talk me through it so i wouldn't have to run and get the teacher every fifteen seconds, but it was a disaster. likely because i was dissociating something fierce while the teacher was demonstrating what we should do! fun!

the teacher asked me what i wanted to do with her hair (i could style it any way i wanted) and i hit a wall that i hit whenever i'm nervous. it goes like 'i don't know the answer so my answer is wrong so the correct response is don't answer because you'll be wrong if you do.' and i just stuttered and mumbled until he said 'well, do you want me to do it for you?' and that was my cue for 'you're fucking it up you're doing bad you're bad' and i was on the brink of tears and somehow fumbled through picking what products to put in her hair. my hands were shaking so hard i kept dropping my brush while i was drying her hair.

i have to do this again on saturday, with someone who's not a classmate, and i have to color her hair too. i'm not ready and i'm falling apart and i regret all of my choices.

 

no, i don't think i'm going to have to deal with that beforehand. but i don't feel ready at all to do anything to a real person's hair. last time should have been less stressful because at least i was workong on a fellow student who's bound to be more patient with me, and i didn't do anything to permanently alter her hair. now i'm going to be working on my older sister's girlfriend, who is ridiculously smart and who i always feel stupid around--not because she's mean or anything, she's super nice, she's just so. smart.

 

so apparently this is 'spa week' and we're doing facials. which means someone has to touch me, and my makeup's gonna get washed off and i don't have any with me to reapply.

for the record i don't ever go outside without makeup. ever. it doesn't happen.

this is petty and dumb but g o d i DON'T want anyone touching me and i DON'T want to have to go without makeup it's humiliating and i'm ugly.

 

i want to quit. ok not quit. but...take a break of some kind at least?

i'm in the middle of moving, i just had a shitty breakup that's tearing me apart, and spending 10 hours a day away from home (when you factor in transportation) is killing me. i have some options.

Spoiler: continue as normal

keep showing up every day just like i am now.

pros: stay with class i'm familiar with, finish program faster, keep mom happy.

cons: having to come home and pack boxes when i'm already exhausted, crying in class, general misery.

Spoiler: skip current section

so we're currently doing basic haircutting. which is three weeks long. you can miss two days out of those three weeks; if you miss more than two, you basically miss out on the rest of haircutting and work on finishing up other things that are required in your packet until the next three-week haircutting class comes around.

pros: might have a different teacher who isn't so aggressive next haircutting rotation, could maybe take a few more days off without totally fucking up my attendance record.

cons: mom is pissed with me, have to be around new class and new people when retaking haircutting, can't take that many days off.

Spoiler: longer break

the school will let you basically pause in the program and resume later.

pros: can focus on moving and trying to get myself stable, might have a different teacher for haircutting.

cons: mom is very angry (if she lets me so it at all), program will take longer to complete overall, new people when i come back.

i'm not sure what to do. option 3 is most appealing to me, 2 is the least appealing, 1 seems like the 'right' one.