13. OWNER OF THE SCHOOL

So Thursday we were all anticipating if we were going to do anything of educational value, or get to assist again out on the floor, when the owner of the school walked into our classroom and said that she'd be teaching us for the evening. We were pretty taken aback, as we never really get to see her for more than a few moments other than when she would poke her head into our classroom to say hello. Our evening turned out to be one of the most informative classes all of us has experienced so far.

Ms. Ellie owns the school with her husband and is a former hairstylist. She has an enormous enthusiasm for her craft, and a wealth of information to share. She teaches in the style of a "regular" teacher, lecturing non-stop but with some interesting hands on material to not let it get too monotonous.

Our class focused on developing an eye for body and facial structure, what key elements about both of these play into the appropriate look that would most benefit the client, and which styles would not. We then went on a search through the school to find examples of these different body types, examining both the staff and the students to stress the physical features that a student can observe in a person.

The most interesting aspect of the evening, was when Ms. Ellie had each of us sit up on a stool, covered our hair so that only our facial structure was visible, and we had to determine the shape of each others' face, the distance between key areas of the face to determine what was the prominent feature, and what hairstyle would then be appropriate to the facial structure. Then we analyzed each others' skin tone and eyes to determine if they were classified as "warm" (reflecting yellow, orange or red), or "cold" (reflecting blue, green or violet). We looked at the hair to see if the color that the person was wearing coordinated to the tones of the eyes and the skin. I was amazed when Ms. Ellie determined that my hair color was too warm for my skin and eye tone, and held up a swatch of hair in a shade of blonde I would never have considered, and saw how perfect it would be on my head, all by taking into account the warmness and coldness of a person's skin and eyes and how to balance the two. Fascinating.

I am considering talking with whomever is in charge to see if I can begin to attend school on Monday mornings and Fridays to expedite this process. There isn't a day that goes by where I just cannot stomach all the paperwork at work anymore. If I have to double up on homework that will be fine. Day classes are 6 hours long and they attend for 10 months. Evenings are 4 hours, and we attend for 18 months. It's a big difference. If I can get it somewhere in between, that would be acceptable. We'll see.