St Mike's - a beginning

My first visit as a voluntary tutor to St Michael's College today. I  felt somewhat apprehensive before I set out, wondering if I'd be up to the challenge of occupying a role in a rigid academic organisational framework. The intellectual or pastoral dimensions aren't a problem. The worry is keeping up with the required disciplines of an organisation foreign to me and my sanguine approach to institutional life. 

St Michaels's College Chapel

For most of the day, students were occupied with start of term briefings. I had plenty of free time to re-acquaint myself with the chapel, where I'm celebrating Mass tomorrow evening, and to read through and sign the must-read I.T. security policy documents, to obtain my college network login details and establish a personal user area on the Windows XP Pro system. It's a bit slow starting up, but neatly offers each user a choice of browsers to download and use, and that's a big plus.

I was impressed with the rigour of the I.T. security policy. It's well thought through, an important safeguard against abuse or neglect, and sets clear limits as to what the resources are to be used for. A theological college is a learning community where people would be expected to know as much about sin as they do about the grace of God. So one should expect I.T. doctrine to measure up to awareness of the wrong things people can do, innocently or otherwise.

After lunch I met with Lorraine, a second year student who'll be acting as Deacon at tomorrow's Mass. She has made all the arrangements for the Liturgy, and we spent half an hour together figuring out the liturgical choreography, before for she went off to hear my good friend Derek Belcher talking about Canon Law. I had an hour spare, which enabled me to cycle over to Staples to buy Clare's birthday present, an Amazon Kindle ebook reader, and then to Tesco's to buy festive breakfast food for tomorrow.

At five I met for an hour with the members of the tutor group I'm looking after while Peter Sedgwick the Principal is on sabbatical study leave. Three men, Chris, Marcus and Rufus, mature students and two women Liz and 'Becka in their twenties. All have interesting backgrounds and different routes leading them to take the path to ordination. I played the session by ear, and was delighted to find how warm and responsive they were to each other and to me - and few of them had the advantage of knowing each other before they arrived in the room for the tutorial. An encouraging start.

I finished too late to travel to Garth, Maesteg for Chris Reaney's silver jubilee Mass, but I was glad of a quiet evening to reflect on the day's events.