Class Note 1979
Issue
November-December 2022
Cindy Vitko, M.D., works in-patient forensic psychiatry at the Utah State Hospital. She writes: “My patients typically have severe mental illnesses (such as schizophrenia) and criminal charges from misdemeanors to murders.” As an essential employee, she worked in-person throughout the pandemic. She commutes an hour each way to Provo, Utah, from Park City, works four 10-hour shifts per week, and takes voluntary calls.
“I usually would have time to ski on the long weekends, but my husband and I took this past ski season off, a good choice since Park City Mountain and the Canyons were a zoo!
“My college roommate Deb Jennings now lives in Denver near her son, Drew, a Dartmouth grad. Her other son, Owen, also a Dartmouth grad, moved to Park City from California during the pandemic. When Deb and her husband visited Owen we had dinner at my house. With Owen living here, I hope to see Deb more.
“My husband works for a nonprofit that advocates for Utah children. My 23-year-old son left Utah to travel Asia with his girlfriend on a trip the pandemic postponed from 2020. My 20-year-old daughter attends the University of Utah and loves her doggy day care job.”
After I read that Ernie Parizeau was teaching at Middlebury College, he shared details via email: “My wife, Kim, went to Middlebury and has been a Middlebury trustee for a long time. She was the board chair for several years, so we were in Vermont often. I had started teaching entrepreneurship for fun as an adjunct at Babson College after retiring in 2007 from a career at Norwest Venture Partners. I’ve also been fortunate to teach at the Franklin Olin College of Engineering and help with some classes at the Tuck School. At Middlebury I got involved helping build a program called MiddCORE (for creativity, opportunity, risk, and entrepreneurship) to teach students ‘life skills’ and build confidence for life after college. That morphed into my teaching a full fall semester entrepreneurship class at Middlebury. In spring 2022 I helped create a new class, ‘Preparing for a Life of Meaning,’ based on a popular Stanford class, ‘Designing Your Life.’
“As an aside, in 2018 Kim and I took a couple of years and moved to Palo Alto, California, to participate in the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), where 40 ‘old folks’ go back to college with the undergrads and grad students. We could essentially take any class Stanford offered. It was great fun and much like my freshman year at Dartmouth: new place, new friends, new challenges. The major difference was that our cohorts’ parties started at 6 p.m. and ended at 9:30 p.m. because we were all over 60! Kim and I took Stanford’s ‘Designing Your Life’ class and found it thought-provoking and a good planning tool for any age. We highly recommend the Stanford DCI program and the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Stanford professors Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, written for the general public, an easy find on Amazon.”
—Janie Simms Hamner, 7327 Centenary Ave., Dallas, TX 75225; jshandkids@aol.com
“I usually would have time to ski on the long weekends, but my husband and I took this past ski season off, a good choice since Park City Mountain and the Canyons were a zoo!
“My college roommate Deb Jennings now lives in Denver near her son, Drew, a Dartmouth grad. Her other son, Owen, also a Dartmouth grad, moved to Park City from California during the pandemic. When Deb and her husband visited Owen we had dinner at my house. With Owen living here, I hope to see Deb more.
“My husband works for a nonprofit that advocates for Utah children. My 23-year-old son left Utah to travel Asia with his girlfriend on a trip the pandemic postponed from 2020. My 20-year-old daughter attends the University of Utah and loves her doggy day care job.”
After I read that Ernie Parizeau was teaching at Middlebury College, he shared details via email: “My wife, Kim, went to Middlebury and has been a Middlebury trustee for a long time. She was the board chair for several years, so we were in Vermont often. I had started teaching entrepreneurship for fun as an adjunct at Babson College after retiring in 2007 from a career at Norwest Venture Partners. I’ve also been fortunate to teach at the Franklin Olin College of Engineering and help with some classes at the Tuck School. At Middlebury I got involved helping build a program called MiddCORE (for creativity, opportunity, risk, and entrepreneurship) to teach students ‘life skills’ and build confidence for life after college. That morphed into my teaching a full fall semester entrepreneurship class at Middlebury. In spring 2022 I helped create a new class, ‘Preparing for a Life of Meaning,’ based on a popular Stanford class, ‘Designing Your Life.’
“As an aside, in 2018 Kim and I took a couple of years and moved to Palo Alto, California, to participate in the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), where 40 ‘old folks’ go back to college with the undergrads and grad students. We could essentially take any class Stanford offered. It was great fun and much like my freshman year at Dartmouth: new place, new friends, new challenges. The major difference was that our cohorts’ parties started at 6 p.m. and ended at 9:30 p.m. because we were all over 60! Kim and I took Stanford’s ‘Designing Your Life’ class and found it thought-provoking and a good planning tool for any age. We highly recommend the Stanford DCI program and the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Stanford professors Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, written for the general public, an easy find on Amazon.”
—Janie Simms Hamner, 7327 Centenary Ave., Dallas, TX 75225; jshandkids@aol.com