Hello Perspective UArts students and anyone else who reads the UArts journals! I’m Danielle and I am a freshman acting major. I’m from Syracuse, NY and boy, am I happy to be out of there and living in Philadelphia! I actually auditioned to be in the musical theater program last February, but was asked to reconsider my major and I did because when I visited UArts I knew it was the place for me.

So, it’s the first week of school, and boy am I pumped or what? So far, I can say that I am definitely so ecstatic about being here. I’ve made so many friends here and it’s so great to be surrounded by so many talented people. The orientation was pretty fun and we did a lot of crazy stuff. My friends and I went to a jazz club one night and although it was a little pricey due to the 5 dollar cover charge whether or not you eat it was still a really fun atmosphere.

I was lucky enough to have a best friend who got into the musical theater program at UArts, so back in April when it was definite that I was coming here, we decided to room together and requested each other. So we’ve had no problems with each other thus far and I doubt we will. We’ve also become really close friends with Greg, Adam and Brooke. The five of us are pretty much inseparable. I love living in the apartments and I really think that’s a really positive aspect of UArts even though they don’t have a meal plan. There’s extra room and Devon and I are learning life skills like how to cook. We made some awesome chicken tacos tonight with some of the other kids and brownies later. We’re in Spruce which I think is the best dorm out of all of them. We apparently have the least amount of bug problems here, so we’re down with that! I’ll put up some pictures of our room because Dev and I are very proud of it. We always have people over all the time.

So here is what the usual Spruce door looks like:

And here is what our door looks like: (Take special notice of the diversity border)

Here’s what it looks like when you open the door, the hallway:

To your immediate left is our walk in closet which we have a dresser in:

If you take a left in the walk in closet you find our bathroom: (Yes, we know it looks like Pepto-Bismol was thrown up in there)

So back in our hall, if you look to your right you find our other closet:

This is the perpetual calendar that my mom made that’s on the wall:

Going back down the hall, you can find our main room. So here is Devon’s bed:

Here is Devon’s bed from my bed:

Here is our kitchen:

This is my bed:

Here’s my dresser. (Did you see those aprons?)

My desk:

The massive amounts of food in the pantry:

So I guess that’s all there is to show you of our dorm. I just wanted to give you the real scoop since in the pictures at UArts that they show you of Spruce make it looks boring and bleak. It’s actually the best out of the dorms!

I only have one course today, which is Survey of Theatre Arts at one. So, my day is pretty easy. I guess that’s all I have for today, but I’ll have more to update with soon!

-Danielle