LOS ANGELES – Erica Lane, a student at the University of Southern California, has been selected for the esteemed Television Academy Foundation’s 2020 internship program.

Lane is working on her masters degree in film and television writing and attended Merrimack High School. She went to Boston University for her undergraduate studies.

This summer, she will work in the scripted series department at Daniel L. Paulson Productions in Beverly Hills, California.

Lane moved to California a year ago this week to attend grad school. She has one year left in a two-year program and within two weeks, will begin her last year of studies.

The graduate student’s dream job is to write for television.

“I want to be a staff writer for TV, for one hour drama shows,” she said. “I really like writing coming-of-age stories about women. So I’d love to be involved with a show like that.”

Eventually, she said she’d like to helm her own show or write pilot episodes for television series.

Lane said she has been writing stories since the first grade.

“That’s my earliest memory,” she said. “I would write little stories. We had a computer and I would write stories with my dad.”

As a teenager, Lane began to write about working class peoplem and having worked in a lot of restaurants, she likes to write about those experiences.

The internship came about through USC, and there was an informational meeting that she attended on campus in December.

“It was an opportunity to learn more about it and see if I wanted to apply,” she recalled. “I did apply and I didn’t realize, but thousands of people applied. I thought there was a slim chance of being selected but I did apply anyway. In March, I made it to the finals round and had to do a virtual interview, because by then COVID was happening.”

Lane said she was just happy that it wasn’t cancelled completely as so many internships were.

“Where my internship category is in development,” she said, “it could easily be done from home. I could read things from home and give notes. But the internships on directing couldn’t be done from home so those got cancelled. So, I’m happy that mine is still happening.

A TV buff, Lane loved watching shows like “Alias,” “Lost,” and “Orange Is The New Black.”

“I also watched a lot of ‘Seinfeld’ reruns and things like that growing up,” she said. “And I was a big fan of cartoons as a kid. I watched a lot of ‘Sponge Bob’ and you’d be surprised at how much of ‘Sponge Bob’ was aimed at adults.”

Lane said she’s not necessarily a movie or TV trivia buff, but said she latches on to certain movies.

“There are a lot of older movies that I haven’t seen,” she said. “But I love talking about movie structure. I’m really good at picking out the structure of a movie or a TV show and I can talk about those for ages. I can do that with any movie. And in general, I feel like I have a more, off-beat movie knowledge.”

At Boston University, Lane studied film and television, with a concentration in screenwriting.

“We did production and animation,” she said. “But I really focused on the writing part.”

Living in California during COVID-19 has been “crazy,” Lane said.

“You couldn’t buy toilet paper until June,” she shared. “It was very apocalyptic. But now it’s kind of mellowed out. L.A. seems fun, but I haven’t experienced any big crowds here. In San Diego though, it’s pretty crazy. Bars are open and people are going to them in droves. It’s a little scary, but I stay safe and work from home. And on the weekends, I try to find a non-crowded beach to go to.”

Lane hopes that through this internship, she might get noticed.

“I want to build my network,” she said. “And beyond that, I’ve been talking to different people in different fields at the Paulson company, like writers and production people. So that’s been good to develop those relationships. But yeah, I hope something will come out of it.”