For this month’s Class Notes we posed the following question to our erstwhile commuter classmates: “Have you moved to a new town or state because you were able to work from home?”
Sammy Desai reports, “After being in New York-New Jersey for 28 years, I traded the concrete jungle for sand and surf, as I now reside and work in Miami since January 2024. Despite the location change, I still root as a diehard for my Mets, Rangers, and Knicks! Happy to connect with any classmates who are also in South Florida for drinks, golf, or pickleball.”
John Nagel “was working in Chicago as the general counsel of Jump Crypto when the pandemic hit. In the summer of 2020 we moved back to the Washington, D.C., area and I have been working the same job from home ever since.”
Our furthest contributor, Jon Kohl, writes, “I work from home. In fact, the last time I remember working in an institutional office, rather than a personal or home office, was in 2001 in Antigua, Guatemala. Because I have worked independently almost my entire life, I have followed my wife to Wisconsin, Kansas, Washington, and then back to Costa Rica, where I live permanently and work out of my home office. I would never give up my freedom for another institutional office! As you can see the pandemic did not change my situation.”
Katherine Aires Byrnes and her husband, “both work virtually, so we’ve temporarily moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for two months to get out of Chicago winter, change scenery, be closer to our sophomore at Wake Forest, and check out potential post-work (retirement sounds too old) places to move. It’s been a fun adventure living in a small cottage and walking to great bars and restaurants. But we’ve had snow and not the weather we anticipated or hoped to be playing tennis, pickle, golf every day—that hasn’t happened yet.”
Stephanie Westnedge says, “I was working from home for years before the pandemic. During the pandemic I was coaching a lot of colleagues how to cope. Now I’m still working from home and quite happy about it.”
Thanks to those of you who wrote in! Please keep those updates coming—we also always welcome ideas for future columns.
—John L. McWilliams IV, 7429 Marquette St., Dallas, TX 75225; Kelly Shriver Kolln, 3900 Cottage Grove Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403; (920) 306-2192; dartmouth92news@gmail.com