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Don't expect a spa-quality session from a student massage.

Monday Nov 10, 2008.     By Erin Brereton

Lifestyle Feed

Last January, in search of a cheap way to relax, I went to The New School for Massage Training Center. The good news: The massage was good and only $33. The bad news: The atmosphere—a large room sectioned off into individual spaces with hanging sheets—wasn't ideal for unwinding (unless you find cell-phone ringtones relaxing).

Which is why when I heard the Cortiva Institute, a massage school with locations across the country, had a student clinic in Chicago that offered private rooms, I had to check it out.

Cortiva offers $40 one-hour massages, performed by students, seven days a week. (The clinic also employs professional masseuses, but those'll run you $79 an hour.) When I arrived 10 minutes early as requested, I was pleased to find the waiting room was very spa-like: A slideshow of famous (and apparently relaxing) art was playing on two TVs, and David Bowie was even softly singing "Changes" over the sound system, apparently aware that my back needed some.

You pay before the massage, which is a little odd, but I figured bargain hunters can't be choosy. Because you're dealing with students, you also can't select the gender of your massage therapist. Mine turned out to be a he; and he was nervous. He took me back to the room to change—stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then disappeared. I changed, laid down, then waited (and waited) for what seemed like an eternity on the table for him to re-enter, which he eventually did.

As he began to massage me while nervously swallowing, I started to feel less like I was there to relax and more like I was on a job interview. (Except for the fact I was wearing a sheet and lying on a table, and no one asked me where I hoped to be in 10 years.) That's the catch with any student massage; therapists can be finishing their first week of school or their last week. I suspect my masseur was new to the rubdown arena because he kept asking me if the massage felt pokey (he felt confident, I can assume, that it did not feel Gumby) and seemed generally uncomfortable to apply more pressure, even though I asked for it twice.

The experience was different than my last massage. I don't get massages that often—maybe twice a year—but I've never had someone work out arm knots by creating a circle with two fingers and rolling it up my arm, starting at the wrist. (If he was trying to take a measurement, I probably should've told him early on that my arms get more and more disappointing as you move past the elbow.)

To be fair, the guy did get slightly better as the massage progressed—by the very end, he had relaxed enough to give me a decent head rub (take that, migraines). But then—as suddenly as it had started—the massage abruptly ended. He thanked me, told me he would get me some water and bolted out of the room.

What? I was mildly relaxed, but I couldn't believe an entire hour—the length of time Cortiva's site says student massages last—had passed. Turns out, it hadn't. When I got up and checked my watch, it read 2:30—45 minutes after my massage was supposed to start. And it had started late.

I thought at first I had misread the website. But after getting a stretching tip and filling out a page-long form on the masseur's performance as nicely as possible, I went home and checked, and yep, it was supposed to be an hour. Yes, I wanted the therapist to relax—but not to the point he lost the ability to tell time.

I was disappointed. Even though the massage wasn't the greatest I've ever had, I did feel better than when I'd walked into the place, so I might have been able to justify it, had the experience lasted an hour. But $40 for 35 or 40 minutes? That's not worth the money, and not worth the time.

Want to check out Cortiva's student clinic for yourself? Appointments are made daily, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., at 18 N. Wabash, (312) 753-7990.

Erin Brereton is our resident urban cowgirl on a bi-weekly search for life on the cheap. If you know of the mythic happy hour that she missed, do clue her in.