Spring Break College Visits: A USC Film School Trip With My Senior

I have lived in Park City since right after the 2002 Olympics, which means I have watched roughly twenty-three crops of high school seniors in this town fly off to college visits during spring break, and I always thought it was a little extra. Why not just go in the summer like a normal family. Why not let the kid skip a coast-to-coast school week. Why not, etc.

Then it was my senior. Then it was my filmmaker kid who has wanted USC since he was thirteen and started watching every behind-the-scenes featurette he could find. Then it was application year, the grades were locked, and the boy was, as they say, dialed in. Mark stayed home with Maddie (who had a pickleball clinic schedule she was not negotiating away, and a Main Street social calendar that frankly sounded busier than mine). I pulled Jax out of two days of school, tacked them onto our PCSD spring break, and we flew to LA. Reader, I get it now.

USC campus — USC's campus in March, the day Jax walked the film school halls and stopped pretending he was undecided.

Why senior spring break is the right time to do this

If you have a senior in PCSD, you already know spring break lands late March or early April. That's perfect college-visit timing because most colleges are still in session, the campuses are alive, you can sit in on a class, you can eat in the dining hall, you can see the kids your kid will actually be sitting next to. Summer visits are pretty buildings and empty quads. Spring visits are the real thing. The two pull-out days are a nothing burger by senior year. Tell the teachers in advance, get the work, send the email, done. Jax's school (which I'm not going to name here because I prefer to keep my kids' names off the front page of search results) was completely unbothered.

teen with drone gear — His drone case has been everywhere with us this year — Sundance volunteer shifts, Capitol Reef, now LA.

The USC tour, from a Park City mom's POV

I'll say this straight out: USC is a city campus, and after twenty-plus years of looking at aspens and the Wasatch ridgeline out my Promontory windows, I had to recalibrate. The first thing I noticed was how warm it was at 9 a.m. The second thing I noticed was Jax. He didn't say a word for the first ten minutes of the official tour. He had his head on a swivel like he was framing every shot.

The film school portion is technically a separate visit you have to register for, and you absolutely should. We did the SCA-specific tour after the general one. The equipment cages, the screening rooms, the Steven Spielberg Scoring Stage, the production stages — it is not subtle. Jax kept looking at me with that face he gets when he's trying not to look excited because being excited is uncool. I will not embarrass him further here.

Park City Main Street — We left right after the Olympic Plaza tree-lighting week — empty Main Street energy is the only way to leave PC.

The non-tour stuff that mattered more

We had lunch at Cassell's Hamburgers at the Hotel Normandie because I'd read about it on a food list a million years ago and I am the kind of mother who drags her son to a hamburger that has a Wikipedia page. He acted annoyed and then ate the whole thing in seven minutes. He admitted later it was the best burger he's had. I will accept that win.

We took a half day and drove to Malibu. This was the pivot point of the trip. We sat at a picnic table at Point Dume, the wind was doing something cinematic to the kelp, and Jax pulled out his camera and just started shooting. Not for Instagram. Not for Woodward Park City (where he volunteers as a videographer, primarily as a college-app strategy, secondarily because he loves it). Just for himself. I sat with my coffee and didn't say anything for an hour and a half. That was the trip, honestly.

The film equipment shop pilgrimage

Jax had been talking about Samy's Camera for a year. We went. He spent ninety minutes there. He bought a small piece of rigging hardware that I cannot describe to you because I do not understand it. He held it on his lap on the flight home like it was a Fabergé egg. Worth the detour.

USC quad — Trojan Family is a thing, apparently. The mom across from me at admit-day brunch had three already enrolled.

What I packed (since this is a Park City mom blog and we do this)

LA in early April is its own animal — hot in the sun, cold at night, ocean breeze in Malibu, no breeze in Pasadena. I packed a Kemo Sabe straw from my collection (the Aspen days, before they opened in Park City — I'm dating myself, I know) for the campus walking. A denim jacket. A pair of pointed-toe boots that are not technically Western but read that way. One nice dinner outfit. Sneakers I didn't mind getting dusty. Done.

teen editing footage — He's been editing on the plane home since he was 12 doing Woodward edits — this is just the bigger version.

The conversations on the plane home

This is the part I didn't expect. Three hours in the air with my senior, no Maddie, no Mark, no dog, no Promontory landline ringing about a tee time. He talked. He talked about his short film, about the kid in his AP Lit class he can't stand, about whether he should apply early to USC or hedge with NYU. I have not had three uninterrupted hours of his attention since approximately 2018. The college visit was the excuse. The plane ride was the trip.

My take if you're considering this for next year's senior

Pull two days. Not five. Two is fine and the school will not blink.
Pair it with PCSD spring break. Don't go in summer if you can avoid it.
Let the kid drive the itinerary. This is not your trip.
Build in one non-college day. Ours was Malibu. It changed the whole tenor.
Bring a real camera if you have a kid who films. The phone is fine, but the real camera is the love language.

Maddie picked us up from SLC airport with Mark, having had what she described as "the best week of my life" (translation: pickleball, the outlets, three sleepovers, and a free PC bus pass). Jax fell asleep in the car somewhere around Kimball Junction. I sat in the passenger seat with his Samy's Camera rigging thing on my lap. The aspens weren't out yet on the drive up to Promontory. He's leaving in fifteen months. I'm okay. I'm fine. I'm completely fine. — Tricia P.