COLUMN: "Education Is Where You Find It"

From Margo Shea's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Fall '92 I am waiting for my education to find me. For a few months, most of us were elsewhere, and we weren't worried about Escort or PARIS or the hundreds of other details, both large and small, which are a part of the world to which our education at Penn belongs. Beginnings are never smooth, and the process of reorganizing life in Philadelphia to some semblance of order is in itself a monumental undertaking. Leftover bills have to be paid, runaway toaster ovens need to be located beneath the piles of mildewed newspapers that everyone forgot to recycle, and there's a daily hum to life at school that recedes during the summer months, waiting to be rediscovered in September. Everything feels fresh, familiar faces are welcome after the months of absence, and it takes a while for reality to emerge from summer's final breaths. It takes a while for education to emerge as well. But if someone told me to define my summer in one word, I'd have to choose "education" as its sole description. In May, I jumped at the chance to become the supervisor for a crew of homeless men, painting gas meters for the local utility company in my hometown. I had no idea what one would need to know to run a pilot job program or to a manage a crew of any size or composition. If the whole thing seemed a little random, it also seemed like fun. Before work started, I pictured myself driving faceless people around the state with paint cans and wirebrushes, passing the summer months with a paintbrush and little stress. It seemed like a good break from school, a welcome change of pace from pursuing this education. It only took me a split second to realize that I'd gotten myself into something far from relaxing. Walking through the shelter doors, I saw three pairs of eyes staring at me as if to say, "I thought this was a job, not a Girl Scout field trip." Why on earth did I think I was going to be able to get three grown men, let alone men who haven't held a job in a while, to work? I mustered up all of the faded knowledge of the stares and scare tactics the nuns used to employ to discipline us in Catholic school and, together with my crew, we painted gas meters with a vengeance. Every day was a challenge, every morning a guessing game, "Who'll show up? Will the work get done? Will the supervisors come out in their suspenders and sunglasses to see how the homeless paint?" As time passed, one of my crew members, Jim, would catch me in various states of frustration, anger, worry and hysteria. The work had to get done, and the most bizarre of circumstances always stood in the way. Had Richard hid in the bushes because he didn't feel like painting? Did someone get caught relieving himself amidst a homeowner's tomato plants? And why couldn't anyone admit that the gallon of paint did not explode all over the back of the rental van by spontaneous combustion? He'd look at me as if he really understood what it was like to try to make something work, to want something to work so badly that every step was taken with breath held and fingers crossed. "Little one," he'd say, "You're getting quite an education." Those words reverberate in my head as I walk through campus, trying to let go of the summer and get back into the rhythm here at Penn. I miss daily conversations with all the guys at the gas company. I miss eating doughnuts at the shelter at the end of the day, singing oldies in the van and sharing different parts of myself and my life with the men who came to mean so much to me. Not an hour goes by here without me wondering how my crew is doing without me and what is happening in their lives. Mostly, though, I think I just miss that feeling of holding my breath and crossing my fingers . . . I think that that's education. Margo Shea is a senior Urban Studies major from Meriden, Connecticut. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" will appear alternate Thursdays.

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