A guide to Beards and trimming for those trying it out for the first time

If you are like me, you never had a beard before. In fact, you never even tried. In my case, I went to a military boarding school when I was a kid, so in the Army, they don’t allow beards except for religious reasons. It was only once that we had a principal with a beard — who was a Naval officer. He had a beard to cover up his radiation scars from working on a Nuclear submarine in the Arctic.

I did have a mustache for a few years into my first job. I got rid of that as well, because it was always accumulating sweat and getting itchy. So, my look has always been clean shaven until the past few months when more and more people I encountered were sporting beards, and I was curious to know what I would look like with a work-friendly, clean beard — if there is such a thing.

I had tried growing a beard before — to meet religious customs for my marriage. But I don’t have good memories of that, because it was constantly itching. So, this time, I used the power of Youtube to properly research how to even start growing a beard — and most importantly, how to trim it — because I did not want an out of control, or huge beard.