BACK TO SCHOOL!

Ah what a delightful two week holiday that was to end the trimester! But now it's back to school and onto new things.

I received my new time table for the second trimester about a week ago and this trimester I will be attending four days per week rather than the three like last trimester. This trimester will consist of hot stone massage, Indian head massage, reflexology (EW!), temporary epilation (waxing but excluding Brazilians which is offered as a short course instead of part of the diploma at CNB), advanced facials (involving the use of electrical gadgets and thingymebobs like that) and student clinic where we will be providing services learned in trimester one to real clients from the public in the colleges on campus clinic.

We don't get thrown into clinic until week 7 however so that means in total this trimester there will only be 6 sessions in clinic. A lot of the girls I have spoke to are absolutely dreading clinic, including myself. It's sure to be nerve racking - here's hoping I don't accidentally tweezer someones eye out or blind them with lash tint.

This trimester will run from 20 May 2013 until 16 August 2013 followed by another 2-3 weeks holiday before the last trimester. Wish moi luck!

ONE THIRD OF THE WAY TO BECOMING A BEAUTY THERAPIST

Yes, that's right. One more exam next week, then 2 weeks holidays and I will be one whole third of the way through my beauty therapy diploma.

I'm very surprised at myself for how well I've done and seem to be one of the best students in most of my classes so far, passing exams and assessment items 100% the first time around. But I'm trying of course not to get too confident as I'm sure next trimester is going to be even tougher.

Home practice red block colour on
Jess (with added glitter!)

I failed one of my practical exams on the first attempt so far and that was for nail fundamentals. In fact, everyone in my class failed the first time around because it wasn't really a subject that was given enough time for practice. The thing we all failed on was the painting of fingernails. We were required to do white French tips and solid red block colour. Everyone found the French tips to be the hardest, mainly because we all practiced on each other and we all have short nails because that's what the college requires as part of the dress code, but at home we were practicing on other people with long nails. At first we were expected to freehand the French tips, which I deem impossible to achieve on nails with no free edge, so most students (including myself) used a make up brush (I used a Models Prefer lip brush) to shape the white tips. The college says that it was a very harshly judged exam as they require very excellent quality of the students before we are permitted to go into the college clinic and perform the treatment on real clients.

Home practice French tips
on Elli

We were given Zoya nail polish, which I had thought to be a fairly good and expensive brand of polish, but the white polish and red polish we received was terrible quality. The white was sticky and gluggy and the red had ultra cuticle staining power, and we aren't allowed to bring our own polish unless we had a Material Safety Data Sheet for it, so we were expected to just deal with this crap polish. The Zoya nail polish remover they gave us in the kits was also terrible - it was very weak and had low acetone which made it very hard to clean up if polish got on the cuticles or skin. Some students even went home and topped up their polish remover with pure acetone to make it stronger.

I passed the nail painting on my second attempt thankfully, but still very much need many more hours of practice painting other people's nails. No two people nails are the same so it's pretty challenging and you need to practice on a huge variety of people.

So in this first trimester I have learnt eyelash and brow tinting and brow shaping, manicure and pedicure, full body Swedish massage, full body aromatic massage (incorporating essential oils with massage), how to give a basic facial (exam coming this Thursday), foundations of cosmetic chemistry (this was an online subject with 5 online quizzes), foundations of nutrition (also an online subject with one quiz) and foundations of anatomy and physiology (this subject was a mixture of online reading and an assessment workbook handed into my massage teacher).

On the cards for next trimester is temporary epilation (waxing - excluding Brazilian , advanced facials, Indian head massage, hot stone massage, reflexology (dreading this!) and clinic studies (which is where we spend a day a week providing beauty services to real clients in the college clinic).

We also finally received our uniforms a week ago - almost no point now that everyone is a third of the way through the course. it's not the most comfortable or well fitting uniform, and the college has adopted a new look and a new logo, which as a graphic designer I am not too fond of.

I hope that soon I will have more to share here, like tips and tricks, recommended products and tutorials!

I'M STILL HERE!

Wow, I haven't posted in many a week!

This is just a quick note to say I've not abandoned ship and will give an update as soon as holidays begin on May 3.

Tomorrow is the impossible manicure and pedicure practical exam (including French tips) and later this week skills tests (which are a pre exam, no notes or teacher tips practice) for facials and aromatherapy massage classes.

Until I come back with more time, here's a few cool vintage nail polish ads! Definitely shaping my own nails into the almond when I'm on holidays!

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.

VICTORY IS MINE! SORT OF...

Coming back to my little rage about my massage class and teacher. After writing to the college admin, I was able to transfer into a better massage class with a more experienced teacher. My new teacher has a great teaching style! She's quite strict about the rules (short nails, uniform etc), but given that I follow the rules anyway, it's not going to be a problem for me.

Now that that's sorted I just have to start stressing about the practical exams coming up over the next few weeks. Next week will be my lash and brow tinting and brow shaping practical exam. We had the skills test for it last week and received feedback on how we could improve for the exam and I only failed one area which was putting a hand towel over the clients chest so as not to drop any tint on their clothing. We still haven't received our tint kits so if you wanted to practice at home, you had to go out and buy the things - I couldn't afford this of course. However I'm not particularly concerned about this exam but more the facials and body massage practical exams coming up in about 4-5 weeks time.

In both facials and body massage class we are learning a massage and will be required to perform it without our notes in the exam. I can sort of remember the moves for body massage, and can remember a few for the facial cleansing and massage, but not the order that the moves go in. If they aren't done in the correct order that would be an instant fail of the exam. The facial massage has about 26 moves and a cleansing routine, including some lymphatic drainage moves which are a bit complicated. The full body Swedish massage that we are learning has over 60 moves but a lot of them are the same kind of move just on a different part of the body. You can imagine remembering the order is going to be killer!

Not having a proper massage bed here at home has been making it pretty difficult to practice with ease, so I suggest that you buy one before starting this course. You can get them on eBay for around $100 brand new, and around the same price from some of those discount websites, just have a Google. I plan on getting one when I have the money, but will be borrowing one from a friend who used to practice massage when I get the chance to pick it up.

UPDATE TO ANNOYANCES

The first order of business is more complaining about how disorganised the college is. I am about to enter week four and am still unable to login to complete my online learning modules which have due dates. The teachers still have no clue when this is going to be fixed, and when I spoke up in my massage class about it on Friday by innocently stating "Why wasn't this organised before we started?" I was promptly returned immediate dislike by the teacher and the excuse that the college had a large intake this year and was told to be patient. Well sorry guys, but I'm not paying you $10k to wait for you to get your shit together.

I really don't seem to be getting along with my massage teacher. She's quite obviously not the right person for this job (she's new this year) and she doesn't know the colleges procedures very well yet. She doesn't even stick to their curriculum or use their resources. She also treats the students like we are ALL teenage girls. Quite a few of the students are, but I'm 25 and expect to be spoken to like an adult, not scalded in front of the class and bossed around and critiqued like a child. There's a few ladies in the class older than me and I'm not sure how they are handling it. I've requested to be swapped into a class with a more experienced teacher as I know I'm not going to be able to put up with this teacher much longer. She's certainly taken quite a disliking to me for speaking up, so I get a bit of attitude from her when I ask a question like she is trying to prove that I'm stupid.

She doesn't give a demonstration at the front of the classroom for us to follow along with, she just walks around with a piece of paper reading the moves out and does the move very quickly on one of the students who are playing client on the massage tables and doesn't check that we have all mimicked it perfectly before rushing on to the next move. She's also not familiar with all the moves being taught at the college and has apparently taught a few moves wrong to confuse the students a bit more. Mind, I've only had 1.5 classes with her thus far after missing class last week.

I'm starting to question all together whether I want to continue to study this diploma, and I really haven't got much time to think it over as the census date is early next week. After this date, if I withdrew from the course, I would still be liable for the full course fees.

My other two classes, facials and lash and brow fundamentals seem to be going okay. It's tough getting my head around the facial procedure but the teacher is great. She's kind and treats all the students as equals. Despite the unorganised college that backs her, her lessons seem to be quite structured, and unlike the body massage teacher, she gives demonstrations in front of the class so we can follow along, but class runs overtime about 30 minutes in the afternoon. The lash and brow teacher doesn't seem to be too experienced with the theory she teaches us in the lesson, but she's still teaching the subject well enough in the practical side of study, and gives good demonstrations of the treatment procedures. However the workbook for that subject is poorly written and most of the answers haven't been provided in the resource book they gave us on the first day which supposedly contained everything we would need (rendering the text books optional). The workbook is due this coming Tuesday and I'm hoping my Googled answers are going to be correct!

This Tuesday I have a skills test for lash and brow class. This is a test in preparation for the actual practical exam the following week. We will be required to perform an eyelash tint, eyebrow tint and eyebrow shaping with tweezers. I suppose I'm confident with the procedure, but I do pretty much everything at turtle speed and when I am rushed I just crumble, and this is a timed exam!

We finally got to try on some uniforms for size last Tuesday. They are such a terrible fit and won't be arriving for another 2-3 weeks so I'll be sure to show you when it comes in!

LITTLE ANNOYANCES

Things that tax me about the College of Natural Beauty - being as judgmental and organised as I am, it was bound to happen eventually. I just have to say, this college is not entirely organised, or they at least don't have backup plans in place.

First of all, I originally was told that uniform fitting would occur on the orientation day. This of course never happened and we are entering week three still with no uniforms. We have also not yet received the lash and brow tinting kit required for practicing at home for our practical exam in week four.

It's the same deal with student ID cards. None of the teachers were sure what was happening with the ID cards and we just haven't been kept informed about what's going on with them. I've heard rumours from other students that we could go to the library and get them - but I never heard this from a teacher. I'd like to have been kept informed every step of the way.

The next thing is that even though my very first class (Lash and Brow Fundamentals) was delayed a week because of the college closure during the flood peaks, assessment dates and the workbook due dates haven't been delayed by a week. I've been trying to rush through the workbook for this class as it's due Tuesday, and all the answers to the questions are supposed to be found in the resource documents that we were given on our first day (a mixture of info pages and slides from PowerPoints shown in class), but of course they're not all in there! Most of them aren't the kind that can be found on Google. It's the same deal with the workbook for body massage class, but thankfully this class seems as though it might be a bit more organised - though I've only attended this class once due to missing my second one last week because I had a bit of a car accident with a taxi on my way in.

I had a Google of the optional text books where it seems they derive a lot of the learning material for the course from. I only got to see sample pages of the books online, but it seems some of the information that we derive workbook answers from are contained in the text books...but there is of course no way that I'll be able to shell out $300 for these books just to be able to pass my course like the girls who CAN afford the books. There's a limited number available from the college library but that is of course first in best dressed (which is never me).

Everyone was also supposed to receive a log in and password for the online learning modules and quizzes which are beginning to become due in week three (next week), but low and behold I still have not received a log in and the teachers have no idea what's going on, but I'm still going to have to adhere to the due dates despite it being their fault so that I don't fall behind.

Another thing that grinds my gears a bit, given my background in graphic design and proofreading, is that the spelling and grammar is shocking throughout the workbooks and resources! Particularly for lash and brow class. I expect that if I'm paying over $10k to learn at this college, that they would at least proofread their materials a few times over. Even the contents page doesn't marry up with the alleged page numbers.

And of course there was that little mishap on the day of my first body massage class where we all spent the first half of the day with the wrong teacher and then had to change over.

So I'm overall a bit disappointed by these things considering how much I'll be paying to learn here. I expected that the beauty therapy industry is an industry where organisation and perfection are key, and I am very worried to be learning at an institution that is wavering on those two important things. At the train station I've been seeing girls from the other college I had originally considered (Australian National College of Beauty [ANCB]) that all have their uniforms and only started last week. It looks as though the dress code isn't as strict too. So here's hoping I didn't make the wrong decision. In any event it's too late now if I did!

In other news, I picked up a couple of massage oils (Sweet Almond and Apricot Kernel) for practice from Perfect Potion in the Queen Street Mall. I was delighted to discover that because I'm a natural therapies student, I get a 10% discount! Usually one would have to show their student ID to obtain the discount but the lady let it slide that time.