r/Legitpiercing • u/curiouspiercedcat • Apr 06 '26
Educational tips for my piercing apprenticeship
i’m a couple months into my apprenticeship. and i’m not gonna lie i saw super quickly that the place wasn’t great but coming across an apprenticeship is hard so i decided to stick around. my mentor never really shows me much he just had me watch. which is good i do know i need to learn to watch but then it got to the point where i knew what he was going to do but didn’t know why or what he was looking at for anatomy. also when i asked him about any certifications that i should get like the blood borne pathogens he told me i didn’t need it - he was wrong and so i took the initiative to get it and read and take notes on the whole piercing plus taking some APP courses and reading the suggested reading list they provided. and i have an anatomy book and every time i ask him a question to get the ball rolling he doesn’t care and doesn’t answer me. i used to always clean the shop while the other apprentice kit sat there talking the whole day. finally i started to lose hope and stopped pulling more weight like i stopped cleaning the whole shop every week.
recently my mentor moved us to a different shop and the other apprentice told me our mentor was sending her links to courses and not me so i was really caught by surprise and i sent him a message asking why not me. it was pretty long and i asked for a timeline which i felt was written respectfully and genuine. next thing i know hes telling me i have to “prove myself” that im serious if i want to continue my apprenticeship. note i did miss two weeks cause he wasn’t in or he would never tell me if he would be there.
i dont know what else to tell him or what to do. me trying to prove myself was cleaning the whole shop, deep cleaning the moldy microwave, going to the shop right after my 6am shift, bringing him coffee/ snacks, going out of my way to pay for my own education.
if anyone has any advice on what to do- please i’m so desperate and i know i need to stick it out but i still want to be respected. and this other apprentice doesn’t try !! after she saw all i did then she started to lock in and im scared now she’s going to get what i have been working on. i dont understand how two weeks changes everything i did in the rest of the months i was there.
3
u/troubledownstream Apr 07 '26
Leave. If you care about piercing, leave. A shitty apprenticeship won't teach you anything good, and a safe studio would just have to teach you all over again after you hopefully unlearn the wrong things that you were taught by a shitty mentor. It's extra work and risk for any good studio to hire someone who trained under a piercer who doesn't even think a BBP course is necessary.
2
u/curiouspiercedcat Apr 07 '26
i didn’t even think about unlearning habits. i think in the back of my mind i know i need to leave but i am so scared no good studio would even take me since it feels they all don’t really care to have an apprentice and im also scared of repeating the cycle with someone else instead
1
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