Cosmetology is one career where you literally see the good, bad, and the ugly…sometimes all at once! However, the magic of being a beauty professional lies in the awesome responsibility of turning boring into beautiful. As any cosmetologist will tell you, this gig is not always a smooth path, and it comes with some, well, unique features.

That said: Here’s 9 ways to tell if you are a true cosmetologist!

• #1. Hair doesn’t bother you. Really. There’s a hair in your food? You remove it and calmly continue with your meal. No sense wasting a perfectly good linguine carbonara. It’s just hair.

• #2. Your kids really get in trouble when they borrow your scissors for an art or school project. (Because, duh, those scissors aren’t the Walmart kind… they can cost several hundred bucks!)

• #3. You dread the phrase “Oh, and can you bring your scissors with you?” Because you never know if your friends really want to see you… or if they just want a free haircut!

• #4. You are not fazed by touching legs covered with prickly stubble. In fact, you prefer your clients avoid shaving right before a pedicure, since it lessens the risk of infection.

• #5. You can watch YouTube videos titled “best pimple pop ever” or “the longest grossest ingrown hair in history” and not feel sick to your stomach. After all: You see this kind of thing daily. (Bonus—it’s a great party trick to prove you can view these clips all the way through without blinking.)

• #6. You say some version of the phrase “No, it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen” every single day. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking thick cuticles, bushy eyebrows, graying roots, a particularly furry back, or a bikini line out of control—you really have seen something more astonishing.

• #7. Two words: Bikini. Wax. The first few times, there’s no getting around it: It’s going to be a little awkward taking a professional look at a stranger below the belt. (The good news? It gets easier with time!)

• #8. You find yourself feeling slightly insane after a half-hour of debating whether or not a chip in a client’s week-old manicure is actually due to your incompetence and not to the wear and tear of seven days of everyday living.

• #9. You know one thing for sure: Be it zits, roots, nail fungus, wrinkles, or ingrown hairs – no matter what you see every day, there’s no ugliness in the world that can scare you away from the amazing feeling of making others beautiful!