The great thing about a cosmetology education is the hands-on training you’ll receive. Sure you’ll have classroom instruction with tests and textbooks, but the most important part of your training begins when you hold your shears in one hand and comb in the other. It’s not like when you grabbed your scissors in elementary school and chopped and hacked at your doll’s hair, this is when you make the transformation from amateur to future professional.

You’ll experiment with the basic cuts and styles for men, women and children on your first client; your mannequin. You’ll gain confidence as you spend more time practicing and honing your craft and sharpening your skills. And, you won’t just be learning how to cut and style, you’ll also apply esthetic massages and makeup, since that’s what you’ll be doing in the real world in a real professional salon.

Eventually, after a certain amount of required hours developing your techniques on your mannequin, you’ll perform actual services and requests from real clients in the student salon. It’s a real salon where everyone from children to elderly clients will come to get their hair done in the various cuts and styles you’ve developed, learned and mastered.

Before you know it, it will become like second nature and that dream of becoming a beauty professional will become a reality.