Believe in yourself

On September 3rd, 2019 I started college at a school near my hometown called Ohio State Beauty Academy. It was hard coming to a new place to learn new things. It was even harder knowing that I was going to be surrounded by girls who knew more about cosmetology than I did. I was only scared because being a guy in a female dominant career field can be overwhelming. At least for me anyway. When I first started I was so scared of being judged not only because of my ability to do hair, or the lack there of, but more of me being transgender. The inability I use to have of doing hair made me think that people would judge me and I was right but only to a certain extent. Only a few girls out of the 67 women in the whole school judged me. But now, I’m about to graduate from school and I’ve done everything from haircuts, to Balyage, to perms, to cornrows. Basically all I’m saying is that, no matter what you do in life, make sure you’re doing it for YOURSELF, and nobody else. Make sure the career path you decide to take, whatever that path may be, makes you happy. Don’t do something that isn’t going to make you happy, don’t do it because of the money, the money part of a job is just an added bonus in my eyes. If you take anything away from this let it be this: If you choose a career, make sure it’s one that you can see yourself doing 10 years from now. Not just 10 months from now. I'd be lying if I said that when I started at the Beauty Academy I thought it was going to be easy. I wanted people to stop getting on me about getting an education and I will admit that I was looking for an easy outlet. As it turns out it was the hardest thing, mentally and emotionally that I’ve ever done in my whole life. The beginning was 16 long weeks of nothing but book work. Long nights of homework, sometimes 4 chapters at a time that had to be turned in the next morning, flash cards, other workbooks. In hindsight I was wrong about it being easy. It was very challenging, for me it was a whole new world. I had never done anything with hair before and I came into this career field blind as a bat. There were times I cried during class, cried at night when I was home, I’ve had mental breakdowns in front of clients and even questioned if I was good enough to be a hairstylist. The answer, if you wanted to know is, yes. Yes I am good enough. I’m good enough because I stood my ground and kept believing in myself and pushing myself forward. We have to stop being scared of the things that could potentially stop us from living life up to our fullest potential. We have to start believing in ourselves and also have to start seeing the potential we have in ourselves. You are capable of doing anything, you just have to want it. You have to want it bad enough that you won’t quit until you make it. The truth is, for me at least is, it’s okay to be scared of things in life. Being scared isn’t always a bad thing, it really means that it’s just another obstacle I have the chance to overcome or turn around and run from it. Side note, if it’s a clown I’m always going to run from it. But when it comes to my career I will always overcome it. Without the people I’ve met at the school I would be the man I am or the cosmetologist I am today. Chase your dreams and never stop until you get them.

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With love,

Khaleb xx