VARIOUS UPDATES (WITH PICTURES!)

Hey, I passed my full body Swedish massage exam! There were 5 other girls taking their exam in the session I took mine and I was the only one who passed it the first time around without having to repeat anything. I was so stressed about failing and all for nothing!

This week is the mid trimester break, which has come at a perfect time because there's some workbooks and study I need to catch up on (plus some of my graphic design work which is falling pretty badly behind lately).

Did I mention already that we had finally received our lash tint and mani/pedi kits? They have some okay stuff in them, but also some rank smelling things. We got Zoya brand polish, base and top coats, which if you know about nail polish, is a pretty good brand and is free from formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin, toluene, camphor and dibutyl phthalate free and also vegan-friendly as most good brands of polish are these days.

The mani/pedi kit came with a few tools like a cuticle pushes, clipper thingies (love my professional terms?), scissors, a bunch of files, a crappy three-way buffer, a pedi paddle plus some extra pads for it, a bottle of red Zoya polish (red because it's apparently the hardest colour to work with), Zoya Anchor basecoat and Amour topcoat, Hawley cuticle conditioner (which smells absolutely vile - like baby sick), Zoya polish remover and these other two receptacles of some of the most disgusting things I've ever smelt; QTICA Q Smart Spa luxury lotion and sugar scrub.

I am pretty sensitive to smells, and this rank artificially fragranced junk makes me feel sick to the stomach. There seemed to be a variety of 'flavours' of the stuff. I got 'lime zest' and some other got things like mango flavour and pink grapefruit flavour. none of them actually smelt like the alleged flavour. They are just sickeningly sweet and gross. I'm planning on buying my own stuff and just hope that I'll be allowed to use it! Surly I'll be able to since this icky stuff gives me an epic headache.

I've attached some pictures of the manicure and pedicure set up at college, and also a picture of the lash and brow tint kit which came with two tints (black [which is not the darkest shade you can get by the way] and natural brown), a bottle of creme developer, stainless steel tweezers, a glass tint bowl and a plastic kidney dish. The brand of the tint is RefectoCil, which after some investigation I have discovered is a fairly decent brand.

Lash and brow tint kit

Terrible picture of the mani/pedi kit

Manicure setup

Pedicure setup

I'm looking around for an online store where I can get the best price for natural supplies as when the supplies in our kits run out, we have to replace them, because we use our own kits in class. When we go to work in the college clinic (18 sessions in total are required as part of the diploma), we also use our own kits there.

Over this week Easter break, I'll be working on my nail fundamentals workbook, my body systems workbook (for massage class) and also studying for my practical and written facials exam. I think the written facials exam is going to be a pretty epic challenge.

Have a happy chocolate weekend!

EXAM TIME

Spare time is starting to become a rare thing while approaching exams. This week will be my full body Swedish massage exam.

This is the second practical exam of the year and proves to be a very tough one. It personally has me and many other students under immense pressure due to the strict criteria that requires filling to pass and the fact that if we don't pass it, we will have to pay $200 for another attempt at passing it. Some people that I've spoken to have told me this is not the case with some of the other colleges, you just get to keep at it until you pass.

The day of my massage exam will be this Wednesday at 1pm (practical exam days so far haven't been full 9am-4pm days, we just stay long enough to complete the exam). I'm required to bring in my own 'model' and treat it as a real life client situation (I'm bringing in my little sister). We will go through a consultation process with our client where we will discuss the massage treatment, goals, concerns, nutrition and a few other things. We will be marked on things like the consultation and aftercare process, dress code,  the massage moves and the way we perform them, the duration (1 hour to complete the massage - I went 15minutes overtime last week during in-class practice, which would be an instant fail if I did that in the exam), the draping of the client and a few other things.

No one that I've spoken to seems to be ready for the exam and it's the general consensus among students that we need more time to prepare. I'm not entirely convinced that I'm going to pass as my memory is having a bit of a hard time keeping around 120 separate massage moves in there in the exact order they need to be performed in, despite practicing like crazy.

Unfortunately this subject has been taking up all of my study focus and I haven't been getting all the practice I should be for my other two classes. I'll come back with an update of how the massage exam went later in the week.

News in other classes - We have now moved on from lash and brow to nails (mani/pedi) in one class but have only had 2 classes thus far (one of which I missed). I've still not yet received my lash and brow tint kit or uniform. In facials class we are now performing and practicing a full one hour facial which consists of cleansing, skin analysis, cleansing again, steaming and exfoliating, facial massage, then a mask and a hand massage. The facials practical exam comes up in a few weeks too, so after my massage exam, this is where all the study focus is headed!

Until next time!

A HUGE VICTORY!

THE WEEK THAT WAS

Week five of my diploma was a pretty eventful one. On Tuesday, I passed my lash and brow tinting and brow shaping practical exam and the workbook assignment. That means that I'm now qualified to do those three things - which admittedly aren't exactly hard to do. The alleged lash and brow tinting kit that was promised to us as part of our course fees is still no where to be seen however. The teacher doesn't know when it will be arriving and can only tell us that they've been ordered. What I don't understand is why they weren't ordered before we all started!

I'm not sure how all the other beauty colleges in Brisbane go about their business or if they are any better, but at this particular stage I wouldn't recommend the College of Natural Beauty. I am hoping that it will improve and that I will soon have some positive things to say later on down the track. It's evident that the college's number one priority is money making. They have their own shop on the ground level of the building that sells all sorts of natural therapy supplies. I've not been in there myself, so I'm unsure of pricing, but I heard that students are entitled to a discount (but I'm not sure what percentage).

The class I am still most unhappy with is massage. I changed teachers a couple of weeks ago after being unhappy with the original teacher. The new teacher is great at teaching the subject. I think the college doesn't consider that WE are paying THEM, and a lot of money too. I suppose that they are trying to also teach discipline  but there's no way that after I graduate that I would take a job that was equally as strict. I'm also unhappy with this class because last week the teacher said it was compulsory that we buy a holster for our massage oil. She said they were $15 and that we could get them from the college's shop. So I went home and sewed my own holster to save money. This week when I brought it to class I was told that I wasn't allowed to use it and that I would HAVE to purchase their boring black plastic one from the college shop by week eight (which is the week of our practical exam). The money isn't the only thing I'm annoyed about, it's the fact that it's compulsory to buy it, and we weren't told before we enrolled that we would be required to buy things, and they couldn't just provide them to us as part of the fees, or even just have them in the classrooms!?

This isn't the only little untold cost that has popped up so far. Before enrolling I was told about this fun excursion that we go on for a day to a farm in Mt Tamborine where the certified organic skin care range Jasmin Aromatique Organics are produced. But what I wasn't told is that this trip is during the school holidays and costs $45.

Another very important misleading thing about the college is the amount of attempts they give you on assessment items. On orientation day at the college they told us that we get three attempts to pass any written or practical assessment. Written assessment is in the form of exams sat in class and workbooks that you take home and work on over a few weeks. But over the last couple of weeks, we have discovered that we really only get one proper full attempt. Their idea of a second attempt is (with the written stuff) having 30mins or so in class to AMEND any mistakes, and (with the practical stuff) doing a couple of parts over that weren't done correct the first time around in about 10-15 minutes. If it can't be amended/corrected in the set amount of time and you have to resit a practical/exam it will cost $200 payable before you're allowed to have your second attempt and can't be added to your VET-FEE HELP debt. Any third attempt requires you to pay the fee too. Until you pay the fee and have your do-over, you can't progress on to the next stage of the class. I was originally led to believe that the 2nd and 3rd attempt were included in the fees and were complete do-overs, not just a tiny chance to amend.

If you hadn't noticed already, I'm a huge whinger. When I feel inconvenienced I am compelled to whinge to whoever is in charge of what's taxing me. I've sent complaint emails a couple of times now to the admin at college about things that annoy me so hopefully this could make some kind of difference.