Becoming An Esthetician & Where I Am Now

January 2015 was the start of my adventure to become a Master Esthetician. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what that is, an Esthetician is someone who specializes in skin diseases & disorders / skin care, hair removal / eyelash extensions, lasers, and makeup. You are required to study the functions and structures of the skin and body down to a cellular level, chemistry – in order to understand product ingredients, medical terminology, and a ton of hands on training of procedures / how to handle clients. That list doesn’t explain in depth too well, but if anyone is ever wondering – feel free to ask.

2012 is when I graduated high school and in the time between then and starting my AAT degree in Esthetic Sciences, I was attending a different college and studying a completely different field. As a baseline I always knew that I wanted to help others be able to help themselves in a positive way which is what lead me to study psychology and work my way towards becoming a Substance Abuse Counselor. Two years passed and I felt like I was losing interest because I was getting no where. I hate wasting time and ended up feeling pretty down on myself, so I knew I had to start digging a little deeper to figure out what I was truly passionate about. Soul searching is supposedly meant to be some complex experience, but when it came down to it, all I did was ask myself what I spent most of my time doing. Ever since I was able to get on the internet, all I would do is research research research.  Blame my worrisome or curious ways, but I loved to dig deep and find out why things are the way they are. What kinds of things did I research? Well, as vain as it sounds, I researched a lot about things that had to do with myself that I didn’t understand. Having anxiety made me question a lot about my health and worry even more about my appearance. I still to this day don’t know if anxiety made my acne worse or vise versa, but both were  – and still are – very relevant. The way you look at yourself has a huge impact on your self esteem and most of the time, mine is at an all time low because of acne. I am 22 years old and have suffered from acne since I was 10. If you can’t count, that is 12 bitch ass years, day in and day out struggling with acne. I became utterly obsessed with trying to crack the code on acne, and just as I became convinced that the devil himself wrote it, I discovered an Esthetic Sciences program. After all the time I spent elsewhere and the fact that I don’t really enjoy the school culture, I felt extremely lucky to have found a 1 year college program that would fully train me. Within that year, it sometimes felt like each day was a week because of the intensive curriculum, but mostly because of the very intensive classmates I had. You end up being very close quarters with the same 20-ish girls for the entire year whether you liked them or not. Like I said, I never liked the school culture – I will write on that another time – but that made it extremely hard for me to mesh with the inevitable dramatic cliquey girls because one, that shit is annoying & pointless, and two, I was there to learn and become a great Esthetician – point blank period – I did not care about anything else there. Don’t get me wrong though, I met a couple of amazing girls that I will keep in touch with, and actually do miss. 

Every day that passed, my love for skin grew immensely and there was never a second where I questioned if this was the right path for me. A whole new world opened up for me. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA which is better than I have ever done in school my entire life. I then successfully made it through my state board written & practical tests in order to receive my license to legally practice.The second I received my official license, I was on the hunt to find my dream job. I wanted to work on the medical end of the Esthetics spectrum, so my goal was to end up in a hospital working under a dermatologist, or at a medical spa under a plastic surgeon / doctor. A couple of months passed and I finally found myself employed at a medical spa in a busy city called Bellevue. The experience I had there was one I will never forget, for good and bad reasons, but what I am most grateful for is everything I learned and all of the clients I was able to interact with. My time there was short because I wound up engaged, married, and on my way out of state – and honestly, that was fine with me. I moved to a fairly remote city that hasn’t heard much of anything about Esthetics. I knew this before coming here, but my husband is in the military so it’s not like I had much of a choice on where I was going. I have lived here for about a month and a half now and as much as it saddens me to say this, my career as an Esthetician has to be put on the back burner for now. Unless there is opportunity for me to practice on the side, finding a good job – or a job at all – being an Esthetician is not in the cards right now. I will continue to renew my licenses and stay fresh on my knowledge because skin is my passion and love – it forever will be.

 

Belle