I found the Rose Cafe with Nicholas Carbonaro particularly interesting because he looked at an issue that many students struggle with – transitioning from student life to life as a young professional – from a very specific point of view – hair styling. This cafe stood out to me from others because this is the first that I have attended where the featured individual had a background primarily in art, not business or academia.

Humans seem to universally apply cultural significance to hairstyles. In every culture, past and present, one’s hairstyle signifies something about oneself. In Qing dynasty China, queues were worn to represent acceptance of the Manchu rule. In modern America, a black woman might choose to maintain her natural hair in a rejection of oppressive white beauty standards.

It’s common for a change in hairstyle to represent a change in one’s own life, such as a coming of age. An iconic example of this in cinema is Mulan cutting her hair before she joins the army in Disney’s Mulan. It’s interesting that Nicholas recommends that students partake in this culturally ubiquitous ritual as well by changing their own hairstyles when moving between life stages.

Nicholas gave some general descriptions of the differences in hairstyles for students and professionals, while still maintaining that his recommendations would vary depending on the individual’s needs. He mentioned that student hairstyles generally needed to be low maintenance, requiring infrequent cuts and little daily care, but could have a lot of variety; bright colors, “hippie” styles, and extremely long hair are all accepted in a college environment. On the other hand, young professionals normally need sharp, clean, natural-looking, conforming hairstyles that demonstrate that they can fit into a company culture. Many professionals have strict maintenance routines for their appearance, and if a new professional wants to impress, they will have to develop their own routine in order to keep up and save time.

What I find interesting about the differences in his recommended styles is how he suggests dealing with limited time. For students, he suggests choosing something that requires little attention and few appointments, while for professionals he suggests picking a style that can be maintained with a strict, invariable routine so they don’t have to spend time thinking about what to do while still obtaining consistent workplace-ready results. He expects students to be worse at making appointments and keeping up a daily routine, which makes sense, because students’ schedules are much more irregular, and they don’t need that same consistent level of presentability that professionals need.