The Nail School Diaries: Part 4: Amie Does Pedicures

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Follow Amie Pollard, nail school student and recipient of the Beauty Changes Lives|CND|Tippi Hedren Scholarship, through her days of school!
 

July 29, 2014

This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went whee whee whee all the way to get a pedicure.

That’s right folks, we learned basic pedicures on Tuesday night of our 3rd week of school and I had the pleasure of having my little piggy’s painted by a classmate. We only have pedicure stations in the clinic (school salon), so we had to do things a little differently in the classroom. My teacher told us that a lot of students start out being nervous about doing pedicures, but in the end they prefer them over manicures because you aren’t directly in someone’s face. Also, if you perfect your skills and are good at what you do you can make more money doing pedicures because in a lot of cases a pedicure can be twice the price of a manicure.  I personally prefer doing manicures because I feel like there are more options for nail art, but that’s just me! Everyone is different.

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The pedicures that night took about an hour and a half because they were our first ones. By the time we graduate we are expected to have our pedicures down to about 45 minutes. This may sound impossible, but just like the manicures being only 30 minutes; you get better and faster every time you do one.

I probably haven’t mentioned this, but our class has 2 instructors. Every other Tuesday night we have our second instructor. The Tuesday nights that we have her, we learn a practical lesson, and then Wednesday night is theory night (book work). So Wednesday night we read chapter 6A, Nail Physiology. This chapter isn’t actually divided into 2 sections in the book, but we divide it because half of it is nail physiology and the other half is skin physiology. In this chapter we learned the structure of the nail (the different parts), diseases, disorders, etc. Do you know the difference between a disease and a disorder? Before my class I always intermingled the 2 words, so after reading this chapter it was clear to me what the difference is. Our book defines the words like this: “A disease is a pathological condition that results from causes associated with generic ailments, environmental factors or infections.” And “A disorder is an ailment from injury or imbalance that affects the functions of the mind and/or body”. We cannot provide any services to a person with signs of a nail disease, but there are different steps you can take to provide a service to anyone with a disorder. Also, as a nail tech we cannot legally diagnose a client; we can only refer them to a physician.

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Thursday night when we got to class we took our test on chapter 6A (another 100!) and then we had our freshman evaluations. In Maine you cannot work on real clients until you have obtained 25 hours of schooling and pass a freshman evaluation. The evaluation consists of a basic manicure and a basic pedicure, and they are both timed. We got 40 minutes for the manicure, an hour for the pedicure, and you lost points if you did not finish in time (and for other reasons too of course). We all went over our manicure time limit, but all of us finished our pedicures with plenty of time left. Both sections are graded and averaged together to get your score. I received a 93. Yay!

The next week we had our first night in the clinic! So come back next week to read all about my first experience on the clinic floor! See you then! -Amie

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[Images: Amie Pollard]

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