Last night...

Last night I headed off to UCLA in the middle of a rain storm (I use the storm loosely, on the east coast we'd call it sprinkles. Here it's the same amount of rain causes major traffic issues, meeting cancellations, etc. But I digress.) As I parked and wound my way to the film school building I met up with some new classmates and we found the lecture hall where our class would be held.

Let me just preface what I'm about to say by saying I went to college. In fact, UCLA is the fourth college/university I've attended and the third I've gotten a degree from. I'm very proud of my educational background and the road I've taken. However, I didn't go to Harvard.

When I watch movies about the typical (or in most cases, the atypical) college experience, I rarely relate. I didn't attend a Big Ten school or pledge a sorority. I didn't sit in lecture halls with hundreds of peers and get quizzed on facts and opinions. I attended small classes, even in grad school. And my experience at UCLA has been only vaguely different. Yes, I attended a lecture class through the professional program but that was my first exposure to UCLA and it was almost always lecture, very little interaction between students and instructor (I'm pretty sure if I approached my lecture instructor today, a year later, there would be no recognition on his part).

However, last night I sat in on my first "Creating for Television" class at UCLA. And I loved it. The experience was like those I've seen in the movies and on television. This is college.

There were maybe fifty (I don't really know, I was in the third row) or more students in the hall, a T.A. and the instructor. There were no 'get to know you' activities or going around the table meeting everyone like we usually have in these classes. Instead, from moment one, we were off and running. We were expected to answer questions, share opinions, get things wrong, try again, speak louder, say our name again, try for a different verb, and know things. Or at least make educated observations. And it was great.

We watched the pilots of two very successful television comedies (Roseanne and Malcolm in the Middle) and then dissected them as a group. Our instructor rarely took a breath. And Again, I loved it.

Last night I felt like what it must feel like to sit in a lecture hall at Harvard or Yale or one of those other highly-touted universities that they make movies about. But the best thing? I'm doing it for real. I'm studying something that fascinates me. And my homework for the week? To watch as much quality television as possible.