Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

With tweezers, a small cup of glue attached to a ring around her finger and precision, Danna Becerra carefully applied false eyelash extensions to a classmate laying in a reclining chair.

It’s not a quick process, but the students in this class — high schoolers in the cosmetology program at Southeast Career Technical Academy in Las Vegas — are motivated.

Becerra, a senior, chose this magnet program, the only one of its kind in the state, to be a beauty professional after she graduates this spring. She likes hairstyling and lashes the most.

She described finding a zen state when applying lashes, an up-close, repetitive procedure that can take up to three hours for a full set.

When installing lashes, “you forget about everything else around you,” she said.

SECTA has housed Nevada’s only high school cosmetology prep program since the school opened as the Southern Nevada Vocational Technical Center in 1966. It already gave its students a wide-ranging introduction to hair cutting, coloring and styling, manicures and pedicures, acrylic nails, perming, chemical relaxing and skin care before adding lashes last year.

Students who want to be professional lash technicians must be state-licensed cosmetologists.

That’s a credential they work toward during their time at SECTA, during extended school days and when providing the affordably priced services they offer to the public from their sprawling laboratory/full-service salon. If they complete 1,600 training hours here, they can apply for their state licenses.

When teacher Tiffany Halstead saw that her students wanted to apply semipermanent false lashes, she connected with her cousin, who is also a local cosmetologist, for “teach the teacher” sessions so she could instruct her teenage students in the lash craft.

Last year, the SECTA students started applying beginner-friendly strip lashes to mannequin heads. As the name implies, strip lashes are a row of synthetic lashes affixed to a single strip that is glued to the eyelid close to the natural lash, somewhat like a wig for the eyelid.

These aren’t extensions, but temporary lashes that wearers can buy at any drugstore, apply to themselves and peel off at the end of the day.

After getting the hang of things with the strip lashes, the students moved on to more advanced techniques, like the kind Becerra was doing.

With extensions, the artist places dozens of “fans” of about six hairs each to the lid using a longer-lasting glue and blending them with the client’s natural lashes. If kept clean and combed with a tiny, specialized bristled wand, these extensions can last up to four weeks. They fall out with the real hair’s growth cycle.

Learning to lash was a tedious task for the novices.

“Lashing is not easy,” said Halstead, who, like all of SECTA’s cosmetology instructors, is both an experienced, licensed cosmetologist and a certified teacher. “It’s super frustrating,” at least at first. But as the students practiced, they improved, she said.

Danna Garcia got cozy under a fluffy pink blanket to receive her lashes from Becerra. She said lash extensions can boost the wearer’s confidence — she knows she feels pretty when she has them on.

Becerra agreed. False lashes open up the eyes, she said. The wearer gets long, lush, fluttery lashes that give instant drama without makeup. Becerra noted that people with lash extensions shouldn’t wear mascara, as it can degrade the adhesive.

“It’s like a little glow-up,” she said.