Learning to Braid... Or Braiding to Learn?

Thanks to Kelly Williams (being braided)
 and Sarai Davila (instructing)!

I  have always considered myself to be more of a guy's guy, the type of person that likes sports and cars and moustaches and manly stuff like that, so for this assignment I wanted to delve into a world completely unbeknownst to me: hair styling. Of course I only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceburg. I learned how to braid hair.






It started out slow, with much hair-tangling and frustration on both my part and the girls' parts. My fingers are thick and not very nimble which didn't help things very much, but after repeated observation, instruction, and hands on practice I actually got pretty good at it.


That's not a bad looking braid IMHO

I am really glad I chose this particular skill to learn for several reasons. For one, the girls were essentially experts, they had been doing this since like preschool. Also, it taught me a new skill in something I was completely unfamiliar with and I like the feeling of having a more well rounded set of life skills (as braiding is one of the most essential life skills). Finally, it is a good way to connect with those of the opposite gender and it was a good way to show off to guys in my floor that I had girls in my room!




We learn so many things from folk knowledge throughout our lives, but how many do we truly seek out and truly go out of our comfort zone for like this? Does it take an assignment for a grade to push us to this? Unfortunately for me, it does, but I hope this will change. It was actually fun learning to do this and this should provide some motivation for me to learn new things like this in the future. Maybe next I'll learn how to fishtail!