The smell of hair care products, mixed with the essence of flowers was as wonderful as the skills of the students there. The Clipper went to review EvCC’s School of Cosmetology in Marysville.

During the course of my appointment I had a scalp treatment, along with a manicure/pedicure.

The closest to getting a manicure I had ever been in the past was when I tagged along with my grandma when I was seven, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Rin H., a foreign exchange student from Japan, had me rub my hands with sanitizer, then proceeded to rub my nails with cuticle softener. One hand was being trimmed while the other was soaking in a bowl of liquid, which I believed to be more softener. The same thing happened with the pedicure.

After trimming came the more relaxing part of session, the part that I didn’t know about; your hands and feet get moisturized during a massage. There’s nothing more soothing than getting the muscles and bones in your hands and feet gently rubbed. The same experience happened in the scalp treated.

A scalp treatment is essentially a moisturizing technique. They shampoo your hair twice and condition once, then rinse. After that they use “cholesterol,” a moisturizing cream containing protein that makes hair stronger. This is then massaged into your head and left in a hair dryer for 15 minutes, a very toasty experience when you still have your hoodie on. After they wash out the moisturizer some liquid sheen and leave-in conditioner goes on.

The cholesterol that was rubbed in gave me this tingling sensation that seemed like the cherry on top until Melissa West, a cosmetology student, worked the moisturizer into my hair and scalp in a circular motion.

The end product of the treatments, I had softer and neater hair, nails and moisturized hands and feet.

The social interaction of the experience is quite intimate,  your beauty professional-in-training is right there; you can’t not speak to the student working on you. The conversation I had with West was wonderful, I found a person that I carried an intelligent conversation with and found things in common.

My first time using a salon for something other than a hair cut was wonderful, there was not one point in time that I felt uncomfortable. Moments prior I was thinking of people staring and making me feel out of place, but that didn’t happen.