Posed with clippers in hand, junior Jayden Pascual takes a deep breath, steadying his nerves before making his first cut.
A good haircut allows one to come out feeling confident, refreshed and made anew. This is what makes the haircutting experience superior for Pascual, as he showcases his skills on friends and family.
“What inspired me was, I say, my barber,” Pascual said, “I think just the idea of being able to talk to people is what inspired me and I thought he was talented as well and I wanted to be like him.”
Pascual’s dedication to growth and consistency drives both his work ethic and approach to connecting with the people around him.
“Being able to stay consistent and just keep working, trying to improve,” Pascual said. “I stay motivated. [I’ve been’ trying to reach out to more people [and] get more clients. [I have] become comfortable doing different things.”
When it comes to showcasing your work and actively working towards success, recognition and establishing a reputation is important, which quickly became a priority for Pascual.
“It’s been hard, so what I’ve been doing right now is mainly social media,” Pascual said. “I’ve been trying to find other ways. Mainly, what’s been going around is word of mouth and just having other people within the school talk to each other about it.”
With no prior experience in cutting hair or creating something on his own, Pascual found inspiration. Pascual drew inspiration from online platforms, learning unconventional methods to cut hair, yet he remained confident in his skills.
“I learned from YouTube videos and TikToks on how to cut hair and how I can improve my skills,” Pacual said, “The tutorials on the steps helped me, like for example [if] I had to debulk the hair first, fade or do the design.”
When the time came, and it was time to cut a friend’s hair, Pascual applied his skills to the best of his ability.
“It was pretty nerve-wracking because I didn’t want to mess up,” Pascual said, “I wanted to be able to build a lot of trust within the client for them to come back to me.”
Supported by close friends, Pascual stays confident while practicing on them to improve and master each cut.
“It was good. The first time, he used too much water, so it drenched my hair and at the end he hit me with the alcohol spray, which surprised me,” junior Christian Reyes said, “In the end, the quality was good and it was nice to have someone cutting my hair that I actually knew so I could give them my honest opinion on the haircut.”
Just like any other newly learned skill, cutting hair inevitably came with its own set of challenges, forcing Pascual to struggle through flaws before perfecting the art.
“One time I did a design on one of my friends and it went alright,” Pascual said. “I think what went wrong was that I didn’t know the steps to doing it because everything has steps, so I just didn’t know what I was doing and improvised on the spot.”
However, practice makes progress, and these challenges have only continued to drive Pascual toward success.
“I think there’s a lot of potential within the barber industry,” Pascual said, “You could become very big if you keep pushing forward and staying motivated, especially starting at a young age, you can build your way up with all of your experience.”
For the time being, being a barber isn’t Pascual’s lifelong dream, but he finds the aspects of it more important and enjoyable as a hobby he could potentially pursue.
“Right now, it is for the experience, but if I can I will try to keep drawing my business out and reaching out to more people,” Pascual said, “I think it is very important because you are going to be dealing with people all your life and being able to talk to them and build a relationship with trust is very important in many fields, especially the business field which is something that I want to pursue.”
