Year one

When I went into doing my HND in makeup part of me felt that I would soon realise that I wasn’t as creative or good as I originally thought I was, this I found to be true because within my class there were people who are better than me, more creative than me and overall just brought more to the table then I could.

Then I soon realised that they also had problems with various things we were being taught some excelled with hair other's makeup but they weren’t all perfect in everything we were taught and through that we started to help each other and share the knowledge that we had from past experiences and this became one of the best things about the HND was the fact that no matter who was better at hair or makeup we were all willing to learn, grow and share knowledge and experience with each other. This is something I love about the course is the genuine camaraderie and were all in this together attitude that came about when we were panicking about deadlines and assessments.

Period makeup I used to not hate but extremely dislike, I found it to be repetitive and not all that creative but this year I found myself falling more for it and can see myself doing some period work hopefully in the future.  I really enjoyed the first period shoot we did which was recreating a painting, I picked one that was from the Rossetti and showcases Joan of Arc brandishing a sword, recreating this piece sword and all was definitely one of the highlights of my first year for me.

Period hair I have always found challenging but still fun to do but I have met my match when it comes to finger waving which no matter how many times I practice I am unable to do this style to a result that I am happy with but I will hopefully learn with even more practice. I have also found I have been getting faster with heated rollers which is always a good thing though I would like to get faster still.

Creative or current trends makeup to me was something I didn’t think I would like or become interested in but I found myself loving the creative looks we got to created and the fact that Branka (our teacher) was always pushing us to step outside the box and do something new and to play and be creative with makeup in ways we were unable to do in other classes, it became one of my favourite classes.

Theatre makeup was a class I struggled with mainly because our teacher was barely in and I feel like this was why I didn’t do that well in her class because we weren't getting the teaching that we should of been getting, in fact the second group of HND ( Year one has two groups of HND students 1A and 1B) had their class on a Wednesday and never missed a lesson while on a Monday morning when we had the class she was barely in due to many reasons, this caused us to end up using lessons as catch up and not as practice. I found it very difficult to learn anything new in Theatre because of our teachers disappearance acts.

Contextual studies was probably one of my other favourite class, I have always loved history and so the mix of history and fashion was quite fascinating to me. It was interesting to see how fashion was influenced by the times and how it changed with each passing era. It was also fascinating to learn about the art and general culture of an era and how that affected the trends in makeup and hair.

Overall this year I found my time management to be quite good, though I was running late some mornings due to the traffic and the fact that I live over an hour and half away I still feel like I did well with time management considering first class is at 9:00 most mornings which doing 3 days a week can be challenging especially as this was for my third day in a row of being up at ten past six to get ready for work and college respectively.

I found myself being a team leader during the team projects due to the fact that I felt that if I didn't take the reigns for the projects we were given then we would have never finished the projects handed to us. I enjoy the teamwork though at times it was a push to get everyone's parts done on time and make sure they were cohesive with the rest of the groups work.

One of the things I found this year was how much more confident I became giving presentations to groups of people, I found myself interacting more with the audience and getting them involved and generally being more sure about the work I was presenting and I now look forward to giving more presentations in the future.

One of the main struggles of this year for me was balancing college with work, I work during the weekends which means I do most of my college work on the days I’m off and sometimes at work itself during my lunch hour or when we're not busy, this juggling of work, college and free time didn’t work out as well as I thought it would I found myself with less free time and almost 24/7 doing either college work at college and home and then doing paid work which doesn't leave much time to relax and do normal things like watch t.v and go out to museums or the cinema,  things that I love to do, though by the end of the first year of the HND I started giving myself the Friday as a no work or study day a day where I could do anything I wanted not related to work or college and it's honestly made me feel alot better and more focused.

Overall I found my first year of the HND to  be a stressful rollercoaster ride filled with plenty ups and downs but I wouldn’t change my experience I feel like I have learned a lot, grown more confidence in my skills and honestly I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.