First Job

    Two years ago, I got my job at the eye doctor's office and it was my first job ever. I always believed it was the job that God rewarded me after applying to 500 jobs and always getting screwed over. I remember applying to this pizza shop and they said they needed workers, so they hired me on the spot. I came in the next two days to train and they told me I was going to start next weekend... Never sent me the schedule and I had to ask them why I wasn't put in the schedule and their reason was that they "forgot." The next week, they didn't send me the schedule AGAIN. At that point, I lost all hope in ever finding a job. Especially since it was the 500th job that screwed me over. I got so aggravated that they wasted all my time that I called them with *67 and screamed "Fuck you!!".. It wasn't the best way to take it, but I didn't care at the time.

    Couple weeks later, my mom tells me I can get a job at the eye doctor's office because my aunt knows the doctor who also owns the practice. That day, I go to the doctor's house for an interview and everything went well until his son Steven comes home from from the gym. They got all excited introducing me to him and kept talking about the things we were in common. I had a sense that they were trying to set me up with him, but I ignored it because I was too excited for the job. They made him train me for the job and I just went along with it because I was desperate to keep the job.

   I started off working as a receptionist and it was extremely overwhelming with all the phone calls and patients asking you a billion questions. Especially since I had no previous job experiences. After the first week of working, the doctor told me to come to his office and he asked me a couple questions and just as I was about to leave, he asked if I wanted to come over the house during the weekend to swim in the pool and hang out with Steven.. I kindly rejected and said I had to go to church when I really didn't. I felt really uncomfortable with the whole set-up because Steven already graduated college and I was just about to graduate high school at the time. Like why would a college graduate want to date a girl from high school.. He's even older than my older brother! A couple weeks passed and I was getting so annoyed of the doctor asking me to come over and hang out at their place. I loved the job, but he was really pushing it. I made my mom tell him that I was uncomfortable with the whole set-up because of the age difference and that if he didn't want me to work anymore, I would stop working. He understood and said they wouldn't fire me for that reason.

   There are a lot of ups and downs in the job but for the most part, it has been an amazing experience. My co-workers have great sense of humor and they tell I keep them young. The only co-worker I will never like is Flo short for Florence. She usually works at the front desk and she's probably dumber than Patrick Star. She makes a million mistakes and finds people to blame it on. And since I was the youngest and least experienced worker, she would always blame it on me. Every time she realized it was her own fault, she would say "Oops sorry haha" in her high pitched voice that could break anyone's eardrums. The bad thing is that if you ever start something with her, she will go right back to the manager or even the doctor and complain about you.
   After a year of working, they decided to train me to be a technician. I fell in love working as a technician because you have one-on-one contact with the patient and it's great experience. Some patients are a pain in the ass, but most of them are lovable. There was this one patient that kept joking about prescribing him marijuana for his glaucoma. Every time he came in for his appointment, he would joke around and go "Where's my weed!"

  It's been two years since I started working there and I couldn't have asked for a better job. Even though I only work there during my breaks now, they never fail to make it feel like home when I come back. I couldn't have ask for a better team. Minus Flo. :)
 

Beautiful You

When I first started using make-up, I was a junior in high school and I was pretty rough at it. I would watch Youtube videos to learn how to do certain looks, but it would only look good if I followed the exact steps. I started to grow a bigger obsession with make-up this past year. It's fun trying out different looks and looking your best. I started loving make-up when I got better at it from all the practice I had over the weekends when I went out. I never saw make-up as an art until I took an art class the second half of junior year and I started to realize the connection. Blending different colors to create a desired look, highlighting high points of the face like the cheekbone and nose bridge to enhance them, and contouring certain areas like the hallows of the cheek and jawline to define them. Just like art, there are techniques on how to apply make-up in order for it to come out right. If you use too much pigment, it may come out blotchy and unnatural.
No one wants to look like this.

When I was younger, I always went to different types of art classes like watercolor, portrait drawing, and ceramics. Of course in high school, I stopped attending those classes and it wasn't until junior year of high school when I took art class to fulfill a requirement. I remember having a teacher that retired after a week class started and got a new teacher that was teaching for the first time. She was nervous at first, which was expected, but after a few classes, she got the hang out it. Everyone found her annoying, but I thought she was great teacher and she definitely did help me improve. A couple of my projects ended up in a couple art shows that i was able to skip the day of school for. It's a good feeling knowing the teacher likes your art. My favorite project was the pointillism project which is basically a painting technique where you make a painting out of dots. I made a landscape portrait of a farm with a sunset in the back. This project taught me a lot about mixing colors to make illusions and adding colors that would create a more realistic painting. Another one of my favorite projects was the portrait drawing where we had to look in the mirror while trying to draw ourselves. It was pretty hard, but I learned a lot about shading techniques that make the portrait realistic. The use of different colors was important for the skin and hair because they are never just one color. Like for the skin, I had to use a tint of blue, beige, yelllow and brown in certain areas of the face.
                                             An example of a pointillism painting:

An example of Portrait Drawing:

Make-up can completely transform a person's look when it is applied right. Before this year, I was always self-conscious about people seeing my no make-up face. I was afraid of people judging me but I realized it wasn't right to hate on my natural self. I started wearing no-makeup out to get over my low self-esteem. It wasn't easy because I had a face full of acne. I was relying on makeup to cover my flaws and I hated it. But over time, I started to accept myself for who I am and having support from my friends and family was a plus. Now, I just wear make-up for fun whenever I feel like dressing up for the day or whenever I go out at night. No one should ever feel ashamed of what they naturally look like. Each and every person is beautiful.