Link: learning internships for new knowledge. In this three week period, Animas juniors get to choose a career field of their interests and work with a mentor to develop new skills. Going into our community helps students to gain understandings of real world careers, with independence and responsibilities.
Lil Pams
For my internship I choose to intern with Janelle McCallum at Lil Pams hair salon. Janelle owns her shop, does not have any other employees, she only takes clients by referral and sets her own schedule. Throughout my internship I worked on mannequins that Janelle supplied, learning to cut and dye the hair professionally. Janelle has been doing all of her clients hair for many years so she has close relations with them, making her job very enjoyable. I really enjoyed the company of Janelle's clients. For my final project, Janelle got me a new mannequin that I highlighted, dyed, and cut. I displayed all there mannequins on a board that I spray painted. I also included pictures of my process.
REFLECTION
I believe that I succeeded in my link internship because of the skills and abilities that I had coming into my internship. I think I am a very creative person so I could imagine my vision for hairstyles and bring those visions to life. Without creativity I would not have had the ability to create unique styles with the dye. Without creativity, I would not have succeeded in the difficult hair-cutting styles that I chose to go for with each of my mannequins. A skill that also helped me to succeed is listening. I think I am a good listener and observer which really helped me to take in a lot of information and helped me to repeat the skills needed to complete my mannequins. Listening also helped me to take constructive feedback which helped me when I was struggling with hair cutting and more. Another skill that helped me to succeed is my independence. I have had multiple jobs before and this helped me to communicate well with my mentor and also helped me to make my own schedule and complete tasks I had for my link grade. I gained a lot of skills over my internship. I grew the skills of hand eye coordination and being aware of my body position and surroundings. This all helped me to work around the head shape of my mannequins. I worked on the skill of multitasking, when dying and especially cutting hair you are handling multiple things in your hands and keeping many things in mind to be sure you create clean styles. I gained many skills and techniques when learning to cut and dye hair including: using tension with my fingers, folding foils when dying and lightning, and making a lot of clean parts. I grew through challenges I encountered by taking a step back and assessing my work and also by listening to constructive feedback. This career field and mentor is very important to me because for years I have really enjoyed expressing myself through my looks and hair. I have begun to think a lot more about going into cosmetology this year, and this internship showed me that this is a career field that I enjoy and can be good at and can be creative in. I have thought a lot about not going to college and I have decided that college is not my path. This internship helped me to see a new path for my life and made me really consider cosmetology school even more.