You can't get any better experience than an old fashioned apprenticeship -- starting from the bottom, UP. Learning all the ins and outs of the shop, how to set-up and break-down, staying on top of sterilizing and keeping the stations, chairs, floors, etc. uber clean, working on your own drawings, tracings and amassing piles of sketchbooks that will be a reference point for your progress, style and creative ideas. And especially learning humility and patience. It blows me away to see the kind of jiffy-pop/I-want-it-all-right-now/impatient toddler times we're living in -- and this new show is a perfect example. What kinds of respectful, quality shops are actually going to take a chance and employ them?? They're no better than all the inexperienced "scratchers" out there working at their dining room tables and inside their garages. [Hmmmm....time to start buying stock in serious antibiotic creams and oral meds -- and laser removal businesses]

I think if people want to blow 5k on going to a tattoo school for two weeks, by all means, let them, i think it's a good base, but i do NOT think they should be attooing people, i think it's a good way to get started, but if people go into the school, thinking they're going to come out of it and head straight to a shop with any kind of respect/further apprenticing they're buggin.. again i think it's a good BASE, but they need to do a full apprenticeship, just like everyone else in the industry.. and for the people who allow them to put a machine to their skin, this may sound harsh, but i believe they get, what they diserve for supporting them without a real apprenticeship, ie; infections, shit tattoos, and bad scarring.