Over the last semester of my high school career I have been interning at Lil' Pam's, a local hair salon located in the heart of downtown Durango. The salon is managed, owned, and occupied by Janelle McCallum who has been doing hair for countless years. She takes pride in the work that she does and always leaves her clients feeling fresh and satisfied with their new cut or color. Janelle also has an innate passion and knack for teaching and she so graciously took me on for another internship, just like she did a year ago for my first high school internship.
~If you are interested in learning more or potentially booking with Janelle, you can find her website here: www.vagaro.com/lilpams/
So, what did I do?:
Throughout the course of this internship I learned multiple basic cuts with different geometry as well as the basic techniques to accomplishing a clean hair cut. I began by reading through a book that my mentor had from cosmetology school, “Core Cutting”. In this book the basics are covered, how to use things like tension, sub sectioning, elevation and over direction to create different looks. As it goes with many practice haircuts on mannequin heads, I cut off the majority of the hair on the head until it was no longer long enough to cut in a way that would benefit my learning. Unfortunately I didn’t take too many photographs of these different stages throughout the cuts which makes it quite difficult to see my growth over time. Overall, I focused on mastering the geometry of the outer silhouette of the hair through keeping a close eye on my posture, arm, hand, and comb positioning, as well as regularly checking my body position relative to the “client”.
The two photos to the right show the first (and let's hope only) mullet of my career. This was cut from the short bob as seen on the left, since it was so short it was difficult to do much else and we figured I might as well try a little layering while I'm at it.
The three images to the left show the second circular cut made on a different mannequin head than above. At this point, there is space for maybe two more cuts to be made.
This is a completely different fake head with a basic cut that has square geometry.
Reflection and Future Plans:
I was reassured through this experience that I do have a natural talent for doing hair, more than just coloring hair as I discovered last year, and that with enough practice I can make great improvements. I am proud of the growth that I have made when cutting hair as this is not something that I had nearly as much experience with. At times I would be pretty frustrated because I might’ve had a hard time position my hand correctly when cutting. At the beginning I would also forget to check the positioning of my body relative to the head which would throw off the entire cut and cause it to be uneven. Even though learning these things was incredibly frustrating, I am proud that I have come to terms with the fact that cutting hair is actually much more difficult than most people think. I also now know that it is not such a big deal to make a wrong snip here or there because I am not a professional and I will learn from it.
Moving forward, I plan to attend cosmetology school at Paul Mitchell in Denver, Colorado. Since my internship last year and working in the salon over the summer, I found that this is a topic that I am sincerely interested in and very passionate about. I have been incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to do an internship such as this because it has put me even farther ahead of my future peers and has taught me that I truly need to apply myself and learn from my mistakes when in school, because after all, I can expect only to get out as much as I have put into it.