Clarence Penny Jr Memorial Scholarship

I am Monique Hrenko. I'm born and raised in Stockton, California. I had a hard upbringing which led me to live with my grandparents. My father was always here and there but mostly there. My mother tried to stay and take care of my siblings and me at first. Her mental illness started to get worse and she refused help later leading her into the path of addiction and drug abuse. With my grandparents, I flourished into the person who learned from her parent's mistakes and wants to take advantage of opportunities given. Since I was young I was always interested in cutting and dyeing hair. As I got older my grandma let me experience so many different hair colors and styles. She created an environment for me that let me express my passions and if it wasn't for that I wouldn't know what I wanted for my future. When I think about my future, cosmetology is something I can see myself being genuinely happy in. In the fall of 2022, I will be attending Paul Mitchell to start my cosmetology career where I hope to start pursuing other fields in cosmetology. Such as estheticianing and doing nails, There is so much I would like to achieve in this career path and I can't wait to get started.

I have always loved working with people and doing hair. Currently I am at Aisling Institute in Kernersville North Carolina, they have recently opened their cosmetology program in July of 2021. I had to transfer to Aisling from empire beauty school so that I would have a better opportunity with smaller classes and more hands on learning. I want to make people feel beauty and better about them self inside and out. Working in the service industry and planing weddings has help alot with my people skills now I want to be able to be creative with it as well! I am a single mother going to school 40 hours a week and working almost every night to pay almost 300$ a week in school. Since the school is so new it is not able to take federal financial aid for its students, which keeps the tuition significantly lower than other schools, but with having transferred from a school that had cost more I had to take out loans for my previous school totalling now 4,000$ in loan debt on top of my weekly tuition I pay at Aisling. I am fortunate to have worked in a salon through the pandemic, Paparazzi Hair Salon, as their receptionist. My boss was very excited about my knowledge of health and hair helping with client consulting and product sales that she pushed me in to going to school. I am currently on an apprenticeship track which in North Carolina is 1200hrs in school then state board testing with 6 months of apprenticeship in the salon. Having a job right out of school at an established salon is a blessing, but it's paying for school that is the hardest. I love Aisling Institute the smaller classes make me feel more confident and having one on one training with my instructors is so uplifting. There are social media classes to train in marketing as well as beauty as a business giving the user hand in understanding how to better our self as a business. The transfer was a huge financial burden for now but I see the pay off coming when I am able to give my clients and community better service and experience. This scholarship will help me significantly paying out of pocket tuition with 2 children is alot of hard work. Even having just one week of tuition paid is alot for me and would be a major blessing! Thank you so much for considering me for this blessing!

Hi, my name is Brenna Little and I am a cosmetology student at Avalon Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada! I decided to go to cosmetology school after working hard my entire high school career to obtain an Associates' Degree before my high school Diploma. As you can imagine, this was not an easy task, especially with the pandemic resulting in my entire senior year of high school and final year at community college to run online only. The stresses of transitioning to University online with no help from advisors, as well as the obligation of staying local to avoid the dangers of the virus all seemed counterproductive to my long-term goals at the time; which led me to research cosmetology programs that I never considered before, as they had never been brought up by college advisors or counselors who urged me to rush into university. This research ended up being the most important and influential choice I've made thus far for my future. In my cosmetology career, I hope to impact people's lives in a significant way by being understanding and accepting of the many things that people have to face regularly in their lives. I hope to learn about every hair type and every technique that comes with working with hair textures that aren't my own because as a beauty professional, I know it's my job to help everybody feel beautiful and understand all hairstyles no matter the hair they are done on. I hope to learn about wig making and fitting, even if it doesn't relate to my daily work because I know that there will be a client who needs my help someday getting used to their temporary or permanent hair replacements due to personal reasons. I know that someday I will get my license and be able and willing to help people in need who have not had access to the resources they need to have their hair washed, cut, and styled to their liking and needs. My passion for the field of cosmetology goes far beyond the need to exclusively work on clients who want expensive services or finding ways to do less work for my much appreciated paying clients; which is, unfortunately, something I find quite rare in my city especially. I hope to someday work towards reuniting the beauty community in making all people feel beautiful and selflessly putting the clients' needs and desires first. I believe that clients should not be an exclusive club of high-paying members; be told that what they want is wrong, or feel unwelcomed in their stylists' presence. I hope to bring back the novelty of a good hairdresser and be the hairstylist that my community knows they can trust. To fulfill my passion, I hope to graduate from cosmetology school with straight A's and get straight into working for a salon whose values I align with as a stylist. In school, I hope to work with a new client at least every week who I can learn more from and gain more experience and insight into the daily life of working as a cosmetologist, as well as take more regular clients. As I get closer to graduation, I hope to meet more amazing people like those who I've already worked with and find out which direction to push myself in as I get closer to graduating and working with the public as well as possibly returning to college in hopes of studying Architecture or another Art while still making Las Vegas feel beautiful, thanks to what I've learned and what I can offer to the community.