My New Journey!

I have such mixed emotions right now. For the past year(2017-2018) I have been in Barbering school. I worked my tail off. I have gone through a few teachers as they have come and gone from the school and I have never slacked once on my school work or have gotten any bad marks. I have gone above and beyond. I have stepped in and taught where I was needed and I got nearly 100% on every single one of my tests. I was excited to donate my time at the Detox center every other Wednesday night and I kept an open mind and welcomed criticism, never getting offended when it was offered. I was friendly to EVERYONE I made friends while I was at school just school friends not outside of school but that didn't matter I was one of the oldest students and many times that was a wonderful thing because the other students would look up to me like a mother figure and I never minded that.

However, There was a time when we got called into the schools classroom. This seemed to be a recurring thing as of late and this time it was concerning a client... This particular client I personally didn't cut his hair, but every time he made an appt or came in  to the school he'd only ask for a lady to cut his hair. Which is never a problem to prefer that, but the person that kept getting asked.. Didn't feel comfortable in his presence and asked if he could go with someone else who didn't mind.. Here's the problem nearly every girl there didn't feel comfortable with him.. Even I felt it and I didn't ever cut his hair...  Well we tried to inform the front end lady who worked there to relay to him in a kind manor that we didn't have any women available at the time but a male was available ...but that lady was extremely unprofessional and said that the girls don't feel comfortable cutting your hair.. He was livid and basically said we were prejudice because he was gay.. (What?!?) That's not at all the case we have teachers and staff and students who are and that wasn't something we even knew about him.. It was just the feeling of insecurity that he gave several of us and we have a right to refuse service to anyone no questions asked.. Anyway.. Our director W**** yelled at us saying how inappropriate we were for not taking him anyway.. OMG we'd make $5 off the haircut FOR the school not to ourselves and we all felt ok to refuse (silently/professionally) this forced cut upon us. So I stood up in class and said No you can not force us to take a cut from someone with whom we don't feel comfortable or alright around.. And someone in class said something really stupid and extremely inappropriate and I stood up for the girl who refused to cut his hair. After that incident I was told I needed to be done too and then my experience at school went from something of comfort to always feeling uncomfortable.. Also during an audit of the school our directors/teachers told us to say how much we love this school and told us basically to lie in a sense about the place ..  Including making us CLEAN the place from top to bottom right before they came and not having classes so it could appear perfect.. I felt like the school was being extremely dishonest. I was ashamed to have to graduate from this school and I told the director this and she avoided me till I graduated unless she needed me.. A barber.. to wash her hair or wanted me to do an undercut on her and her daughter instead of paid clients.. I ended up hating the school by the end.   And at graduation I was humiliated as she didn't speak about any of the good that I did.. I felt horrible and sad. I was one of the Student Body Presidents and always set up and took down for other graduations and called and organized 2 food drives. Everything I did for that school wasn't mentioned at all.. Just that  " You're a busy mother and maybe if you're lucky  you'll get work for a day or two with your schedule." I am grateful to be done but my whole self didn't even want to barber at all once I was through.  I felt defeated, ashamed and lied to about the quality of school this was.

I have since left the state to be rid of the commonality of this kind of people around me. I do not want this life. I moved to Arkansas and of course the grass is always greener right?  Well, Folks it's not true it's just been spray painted.. to look greener.. 

Life is an incredible journey.  It truly is up to us to make this life and the choices in our life worth the effort. 

I still barber on the side and I have been finding that working on myself and finding my worth is the incredible journey that I'm going on.