Thread: At what point do you stop calling yourself a beginner?

Wow! Great forum. AS of many of you I have started in August/September, I can usually get a pretty good shave as I don't know if I truly still consider myself a beginner in more the sense I rarely knick or gouge my face. However, I do feel I am a novice with many things to learn and still try. SR shaving has truly made me appreciate "the art of shaving"!

Maybe one of the criteria for going beyond beginner would be when a satisfactory SR shave is achieved without much perceived effort or attention to detail and there are no complications, almost like an unconscious process where the process itself is never examined but simply flows from experience. Not mindless, but very mellow. I don't think it can be a black & white distinction.

I don't agree with Mick, though. Seriously, I've got to have some working concept of beginner, intermediate, and for G-d's sake allow experts to exist. That's an extreme version of "beginner".

I like what Mick said but I don't think of myself as a beginner. OTOH, I continue to learn .... shaving, lathering, stropping, honing ..... I keep an open mind and continue to improve. Sometimes in baby steps .... hitting a plateau and staying there for a long while and suddenly finding myself a little higher up the mountain. Like a lot of things it is probably a lifetime journey. As the old saying goes, I focus on the journey, not the destination.

Beginner in what regards? Shaving, honing, stropping, blade maintenance, lather making - or all of the above combined?

From strictly a shaving point of view, if your shaves are consistant and satisfactory and you can competantly maintain a shave ready edge indefinitely then I suppose you would no longer be considered a beginner. But taking all the aspects of this art into consideration, there's always something to learn and it's a long way to expert level.

I think when the actual shaving becomes a bore and you do not even think about it anymore.
The fun and excitment,at least for me is in the stones,the never ending hunt for the perfect edge,always looking for that magic rock.

I wouldn't say I'm a beginner AND I would not say I'm an expert. I would say I know just enough to be dangerous! Lol