University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Dance Major
North Little Rock High School Grad

How did you arrive at UALR? And what kind of opportunities has the capital city afforded you?

One of the other schools that I considered, and I actually went to orientation and got accepted, was in a really small town, and it was really quiet, the inner-city was really tiny. They didn’t have a lot of places to go, and I felt like I was closed off from the world. And here, I feel like it’s so much more open, I have a bunch of opportunities. And they didn’t have the academic major that I was looking into. They had a minor in it, but I know that if I wanted to pursue my career choice, that this would be the place for me. And so, this is what attracted me to UALR.

I started dancing halfway through my sophomore year of high school. I started out in musicals. My favorite thing about being in this city is the shows. Like, I can go down to the Rep Theater and see shows, also traveling shows come to Robinson Center Music Hall and I get to see shows there. Also there’s a bunch of restaurants. Kavanaugh is really close to the school. Kavanaugh has a bunch of really cool places. It’s really culturally diverse, and there’s like little restaurants, they’re just home-town restaurants, not chains.

There are a lot of apartments too. So you can find a place to live, right in the inner-city too. And of course park plaza mall is right here. So you can shop. Everybody loves to shop. New clothes all the time. So that’s really cool about living in the city.

I actually lived on campus my first semester of school, in the apartments on campus. And they are really nice. They’re really comfortable. You get your own room and you have a kitchen and a refrigerator and everything. And you can make your own food. I really liked that. I’m actually considering moving to an apartment really close to the mall, Park Plaza, cause it’s really like a 10-minute, less than 10-minutes to get to school. And that’s really convenient. And then it’s really convenient to the interstate so I can get to North Little Rock or West Little Rock and get to work.

If you live in Little Rock, there’s a ton of job opportunities, because first of all, all the restaurants, anybody can be a waiter when you’re in college, and there’s a ton of restaurants right here in town, out in west Little Rock, over off Breckenridge village, you can work at the movie theater, all those restaurants out there. Even downtown in the metro area there’s businesses that you can work at.

A lot of people seem to think that living in the city is just living in the city, it’s like a concrete jungle. But actually, it’s not always loud. I mean, there’s a bunch of quiet places you can go. Cause I think when people think of this city they think it’s always loud and rush and bunch of people. But it’s pretty quiet. You can find a peaceful place. You can go to the parks downtown, there’s the river bridge, and you can go to Pinnacle mountain which is just around the corner, there’s Burns Park out in north little rock, and there’s parks and bridges, you can go golfing out there. My mom and her friends they like to go out and go fishing, out by the river, there’s also places you can fish out in Burns Park, there’s a dog park out in Burns Park. It’s really cool. There’s a whole bunch of outdoorsy things. You can go down by the river trail. If you like outdoorsy kinds of things, Little Rock area is a great place to live for that.

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