It was February 2007, and for about a month Krissy Simmons had been living her dream of attending
CHIC University of Cosmetology an Empire School in Portage, Michigan. “Things were going fabulously,” Krissy recalls. “I was enjoying
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school, and it was exactly what I was looking for—an outlet for my creative side. Plus I was meeting a great group of people!”
However, at this point Krissy was dealt a double blow: her great-grandmother, to whom she was very close, passed away, and two weeks later her grandfather took sick. Krissy’s parents went to Texas to be with her grandfather, leaving Krissy to look after her teenaged brother as she continued to attend school 40 hours a week and work roughly 20 hours a week. “This was probably the most stressful time of, not only my schooling career, but my entire 26 years,” Krissy says. “My mother was a wreck, as were her five brothers and sisters, and they were all 1,200 miles away.” Sadly, Krissy’s grandfather died within weeks.
“We had the funeral, and things slowly got back to normal,” notes Krissy. Then in April, two days before her
beauty school junior finals, her great-uncle, brother to her grandfather who had just died, also passed away. Says Krissy, “I spent my junior final ‘break’ out of town, attending a funeral and family dinners.” Next time, Krissy will tell us about a different type of stress when she takes her first client at the school’s salon.