Yeah, I Really Like Ice Blendeds. So?

My first day at USC, the writing division's assistant director stood up in front of the newly-minted class of 32 first year students and urged us in the strongest possible terms to Never, Never, Never Blog About School No Matter How Much We Might Want To.

This was excellent advice. In fact, we didn't know it then, but the class ahead of us had fallen into Harriet-the-Spy-type recriminations and hullabaloo precisely because of overly explicit blog coverage. And so I have drawn the curtain of discretion over my experiences at USC, with the unfortunate side effect that I posted about six entries the entire time I was in school.

However, I am serious about wanting this to be the kind the of blog I so desperately needed before I moved out here, so now that I am out of the program, I think it is time to answer the question...

Should I Go to Film School at USC?

Maybe.

First, I don't recommend the undergrad program. Mainly because I am secretly a 97-year-old biddy and don't like to see young people have fun. And because college should be a time of wandering, screw ups and false starts, none of which fits with locking yourself into a BFA program.

I went to the University of Wisconsin with every intention of getting a B.A. in journalism. This turned out to be a profoundly bad idea, and in time, I managed to figure out a better path. But if I had been trapped in the J-School from day one, it might have taken me much, much longer to pull the plug. Bottom line: I don't think anyone should be locked into the decisions they make at 18.

Also, in all honesty, very few people under 21 have the life experience -- and sufficient distance from said life experience -- to craft engaging stories. Instead, such writers (myself very much included) tend to delve into the fantastical and arch, which is fun to write, exhausting to read and impossible to produce. Better to bide your time, break up with your fiance, nurture unrequited crushes, throw up on the Bedford platform of the L, drive across the Rockies at 3 in the morning, smuggle a cat into a Best Western, buy and discard several apartments worth of Ikea, and then one day realize: You want to write for television.

That was my path. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'm pretty happy with how it worked out, so feel free to borrow it if you're so inclined. (Although, sometimes in the middle of the night, I wish I'd gone to Wesleyan, because every alum I've ever met is so smart and engaged and doing what they love. I don't know if it's something in the drinking water or what. But I digress.)

Second, I can't speak to the production MFA program. People seem to get a lot out of it and go onto successful careers in the industry, but I have no idea what it's actually like as a program.

Third, I don't know what it's like to go through the USC screenwriting program with the intention of writing for film. That was never my interest, and although I paid attention to those classes and did my best, my heart always belonged to hour long television. This may also explain why I got dinged at NYU, Columbia and UCLA, none of which have much in the way of a TV track. (I met a UCLA alum once who warmly described how much he enjoyed the TV class. The class. As in, one.)

All that said, if you want to write for television and you haven't been able to break in with a Disney fellowship or the like, then yes, I would definitely recommend USC's MFA screenwriting program.

Despite the Great Blog Incident of 2005, the program is full of great folks -- all gifted writers, generous classmates and good friends. Graduate school is not "The Real World." Everyone in the program managed to leap USC's various hurdles, i.e. assembling an application, and horrifyingly, taking the GRE. Eff! That's three months of my life I'll never get back. So there's a basic threshold of sanity/real life competence that is refreshingly different from the first week in the freshman dorm, when your roommate broke your turntable and then had sex with a UW running back WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the other candidates. It is a huge help to look around and realize that of the other 31 people in the program, not one of them writes the way or the kind of thing that you write. At that moment, it becomes very clear that you're not in competition with these people -- you're all on your own path. That's an important piece of information to absorb.

And then, of course, there's the actual education.

In two years, I took classes from successful sitcom and hour-long writers; sat through 15 weeks of visiting writers in Television Symposium; wrote a spec for "My Name is Earl" and "Grey's Anatomy," plus an original pilot; met a ton of working writers, from Josh Schwartz's visit to Industry Seminar to Ron Moore's appearance in hour-long drama and visited the set of "According to Jim" and "Ugly Betty."

I know, I know, big whoop, I got to visit the set. But both of those field trips taught me invaluable lessons about the industry. At "Ugly Betty," I learned the importance of keeping your head down and your eyes open -- both skills that served me well as an intern at "Mad Men." And at "According to Jim," I learned that producers sometimes hire Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf trucks to come in and make Ice Blendeds for the entire cast and crew (and any other folks who might be on set that day.)

I love good television and I love my job and I'm psyched to go back to work, but nothing, NOTHING has ever filled me with as much excitement for my chosen career as that free Ice Blended. In that moment, I knew I was on the right path.