And now, the continuation of… The Fascinating and Ugly World of Beauty School, as Told by a Grown Up

And now, the continuation of… The Fascinating and Ugly World of Beauty School, as Told by a Grown Up Female Comedian Attempting to Learn a New Skill.The first day of beauty school on November 17th could not come fast enough.  I could not wait to start school again until I remembered that it was school.I have had many a first day of school. My father was a diplomat so my family moved around my entire childhood. Every two to three years I was starting over in a brand new country, at a brand new school, with a brand new culture to adapt to. Being the new girl and sticking out was never an issue for me because I reveled in the opportunity to re-imagine myself. I was like Madonna. New album, new style. New country, new Julia.In the 3rd grade I went to a British school called St. Catherine’s in Athens, Greece where I had to wear a uniform for the first time and thus transformed myself into a proper little English lady like the little girl in The Secret Garden. In 7th grade, my family moved to Caracas, Venezuela where I went to Escuela Campo Alegre and was quick to pick up the peck on the cheek hello and necessary Spanish phrases like “Donde esta el autobus?”, “Me encanta futbol” and “Una mas arepa por favor”. When I was 13, the quintessential height of wanting to “fit in”, I started high school at Campion College in Kingston, Jamaica where I was the only glowing bright white redheaded girl with headgear and braces in my class (pictured here with my girls Sanya, Audi, Juliette, and Janai) but it didn’t matter that I didn’t look like anyone because I would sing with weird voices and do a bad Spanish accented character called Valeria who “looooved pound cake” to make my classmates laugh. I loved that change was my only constant and that assimilating was second nature.What I didn’t love was school. I once brought a report card home in elementary school and as my mother looked over it, comparing the grades of her three school aged children, she remarked “You’re a different kind of smart, Julia. You have to work much harder for the same grades your brother and sister get without trying.” So, am I the dumb kind of smart? Sounds like I might be stupid. Cool, cool. Thanks Mommy! I’ll be in the corner trying to tie my shoelaces until dinnertime.Needless to say, mothers’ off handed remarks like these are the only ones we all tend to remember. Still, though I enjoyed learning about new things, my mother was right. Things would never stick as quick as I wanted them to and any slack or default in study habits would result in report card disaster or worse yet, having to repeat levels of improv training at the Upright Citizens Brigade.And now I am a grown up woman putting myself back into a school setting for 7 months and I am suddenly frightened that my brain is just not going to cut it. (Pun intended because hair puns are fun puns). There is math and science involved in haircoloring and geometry involved in haircutting. I idiotically prided myself on getting through high school without taking chemistry and every math class I took required me to have multiple tutors and additional office hours with the teacher. What if the lessons go too fast and I don’t understand and burn someone’s hair off their head forever?!As Monday, the 17th of November, 2014 approached I found solace in my husband’s reminder that I was no longer a teenager or twenty-something. My years of experience outside of school could benefit me because I had achieved a new level of personal focus that was never possible when I was developing breasts or discovering that I might want boys to touch said breasts. I was not going to be distracted by the things a younger Julia would be distracted by and therefore the goal was all the more attainable. Still, I was going to have to buckle down and study harder than I had in years, so I extracted myself from the life I had been living in order to be completely submerged in everything beauty school. I stopped going to shows, doing shows, and auditioning. I put my life on hold and crossed my fingers that nobody in my family would become seriously ill or dead. I eliminated anything that would distract me because nothing was to get in the way of me learning this new skill. If I was going spend this money and take this time, I was going to learn to love school. It may sound a little dumb, but that is the kind of smart I am. -- source link

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