CNB ORIENTATION DAY 2013

Today I pulled my hair back into a painfully tight ponytail and caked some make up onto my sleepy face, and headed into Fortitude Valley for the College of Natural Beauty's orientation day.

I would say there was around 50 or more girls attending, all quite young, a few that seemed to be under 18. We were given name tags and divided into two large groups and put in separate rooms where we were shown a PowerPoint presentation (URRRRRGH I KNOW - DBPP) and given more information about the college and about the course we are about to embark on.

There was a couple of group activities which I suspect was to get us mingling. The first was called "people bingo" where we were all given a sheet with square on it and in t walk around the room and ask as many people as you could within eight minutes which activities they had done and list their names in in the box, and the person with the most filled in at the end won a prize (which wasn't me - I've never won a prize so I didn't even bother to see what it was - I just resigned myself from the very beginning). For the second activity, small groups of five or so were given some butchers paper (I was the scribe) and asked to all come up with some key words about what we thought were important in the beauty industry; like professionalism, personal hygiene, discreetness etc.

The presenters spoke in depth about the dress code which was quite strict. Only stud earrings, no facial piercings, visible tattoos or jewellery, day makeup is to be applied every day (even if you're just going to have to remove it as soon as you get to facials class) and a recommendation that you don't wear waterproof mascara, black leather or vinyl shoes with black socks, no cleavage  no hair hanging in the face, and as soon as your hair is long enough it's to be put into a bun or braided bun. We didn't receive or get fitted for uniforms today and unfortunately we won't be getting our uniforms for another 5-6 weeks (and I was so dying to share with you now!) But we did get to see the uniform and it's a conservative, longish black tunic with the popped collar and buttons down the side - a regular therapist uniform really, embroidered with the college's logo.

One things that I thought was particularly cool is that as part of your enrolment at the college, you can have three free confidential counselling sessions with the 24/7 Student Assistance Program for pretty much any issues that could affect your studies like relationship issues, depression, stress and anxiety (yay for me), gambling, grief, drug addiction and all those sorts of things.

There's not much else particularly interesting to say, but I suppose if you're reading you're not looking for interesting, just informative so other activities included in orientation day was filling out forms; first a sort of quiz that asked questions like 'what are your strengths and weaknesses' and 'why did you choose beauty therapy' etc, the others were medical forms where you were obliged to disclose any illnesses you suffer from in case it could interfere with your classes (i.e my allergies are not looking forward to aromatherapy so much) and an agreement to say you would tell the college if you have hepatitis and then just a photo consent form for permission to use images of you on their Facebook and in publications etc.

And just a few more bullet points about things learned today:

• There is a big university style library on the third floor open until 7pm through the week with computers and quiet study areas and areas for laptop plugins and printing services (which cost)
• There is a freaking awesome hydrotherapy tub on the fifth floor which looks like a space ship
• There is very small lunch room but I don't remember what floor; the fridge space is first in best dressed
• Parking is $10 at McWhirters or $9 at Valley Metro (which fills up quick), and you need to validate it at the college reception on level two to redeem these rates
• No smoking in your CNB uniform - beauty therapists have to smell perfect!
• Further to that, there is no perfume allowed to be worn THANK GOD
• Assessment is by way of workbooks and online quizzes and some practical examinations that you get three attempts for
• Every student does 18 weeks of work in the student clinic/salon
• They recommend that you complete a first aid certificate
• Employers can come to the student clinic as 'secret shoppers' looking for the next star
• The clinic will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in the future and it's going to be hard to secure the Friday unless you have extenuating circumstances
• You will need to do lots of practice at home - especially massage which is a big component at CNB as opposed to most other colleges
• CNB are against animal tested products and ingredients! Yay!

Right, so I start this coming Tuesday, with lash and brow tinting class. Will report back with my findings!