The days when all students and teachers were clean-shaven are long gone. Today a number of people walking the halls of Concord High School are sporting facial hair.

Senior Will Richards, president of Model UN Club, took advantage of the pandemic to grow his beard.

“I always had some kind of scruffy facial hair and I never really knew how to keep it, so I decided I was going to try out a beard during COVID, when not many people were around me,” he said. “I found I really liked it, so I’ve been keeping one ever since.”

While some people believe growing a beard or moustache requires no effort at all, the opposite is true.

Richards said trimming is a regular chore.

“In the summer, I will clean it up probably once every two weeks. Sometimes it gets a little scruffier. Depends on my style. In the winter, that slows down because I like it—it keeps my face warm—so I’ll do that probably once a month or so.”

Using an electric trimmer takes practice and strategy. “I set it to be a little bit off of my skin [leaving behind a stubble beard] I get my beard nice and wet so I get the hairs all out, and straighten it because I have a curly beard, I trim it down, and I clean it up under the neck and on the cheeks to keep it nice and clean.”

Math teacher and bowtie afficionado Timothy Beaulieu also enjoys having a beard during colder months. “I feel like it insulates me a little bit better.”

“I don’t like having a beard in the summer because it just gets too hot,” he explained.

Like Richards, Beaulieu is proactive with maintenance. “If I let it go completely it would just be very scraggly and not look very neat, so maybe once or twice a week I’ll just go in, clean up the sides. It’s getting long enough now that I’m just doing it with scissors, just to kind of keep its shape. I let it fill in otherwise.”

“This current beard that I have, I kind of messed up shaving, in late, late November, and so this current beard is about a month and a half in the work. Currently I’m trying to let it grow, and then just grooming the sides, to just keep a clean look.”

While most bearded people trim their beard simply once or twice a week, some people trim their beards anywhere from three times a week to every single day, similar to the practice of people without beards, who can shave anywhere from once a week to twice a day.