I'm a nail tech in training and I'm coming to the end of my gel nail extension course. My college has a salon attached to it and I had my first day there yesterday. She was in a rush to leave which meant I was rushing.
...I know I'm still a student but is this normal?
Try not to over think this. You are still training and at this stage you should be focusing on application technique rather than speed. The speed will come when you have more experience.
Clients using a college training salon are supposed to be told when booking to allow x amount of time for the service as students are still in training but fully supervised. If they have time constraints, they need to book into a normal salon that employs fully trained and experienced techs and pay the going rate!
In this case, your tutor should have stepped in to ask the client to be more patient and to allow you to complete the service in a reasonable time.
A cautionary tale:
I had this happen to me once at the Sassoon Academy in London when I was completing a cutting course there. I was already level 3 qualified but wanted to improve my techniques.
The normal Sassoon hair salon in Bond Street charges high end prices for a cut and finish but the training salon only charges something like £12. Unfortunately, my client wanted a decent hair cut but on the cheap as she was going straight out for a job interview and deliberately ignored the advice about length of appointment.
During training you have to wait for the tutor to check the section before you're allowed to move to a different part of the head, so the whole process is very time consuming but thorough.
She wanted to leave and my tutor became increasingly annoyed with her the more she argued and it was quite a spectacle.
I did feel a bit sorry for her but she acknowledged that she'd been told to allow 2 hours for the appointment and had deliberately ignored it and had hoped to be done in 40 minutes.
The client kept asking me to just quickly finish it off so she could get going for her interview but my tutor was very firm with her and wouldn't allow me to just finish it off quickly.
She'd gone from shoulder length straight hair to a chin length graduated bob but left with only one side of her hair properly cut!!