Instructors of a new Academy course are providing students with something novel in a fast-paced academic environment: space and time to reflect, free-write and meditate on the present moment. At the start of each EXI506: The Art of Slowing Down class, students gather around the table and share two minutes of silence. 

This interdisciplinary course, offered for the first time in the spring term, draws from a range of literary, religious, philosophical and humanistic sources to help students build a practice of creative writing rooted in stillness and slowness. Handwritten “musings” require the students’ sustained attention to themselves and the world around them without technology, and inspire contemplative discussions in line with the school’s Harkness pedagogy. The class designers hope this approach will serve students now and in future endeavors.

 “The aim of the class is not production; it’s process,” says Chelsea Woodard, an English instructor who is co-teaching the course with Hannah Hofheinz, an instructor in the Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department. “We’re really trying to model that in everything we do.” 

Prior to the widespread use of smartphones and social media, sitting quietly for two minutes or jotting in a journal may not have seemed like much of a challenge. But as the presence of these technologies has expanded, research has shown that our attention spans have shrunk, and our need for digital stimulation has swelled.

According to decades of research led by Gloria Mark, a chancellor’s professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine, the median attention span is now 40 seconds. So in the time the students sit quietly around that Harkness table, they may have otherwise read an email, sent a text and scrolled through Instagram. Their teachers may have done the same; studies indicate that screen-switching is common among all ages. 

“So much of technology makes life better and easier,” Hofheinz says. “But one of its other consequences is that it has brought this misleading promise of multitasking and the seduction of speed and ease with which we can accomplish tasks.” This perception heightens expectations around productivity. “It creates a real vortex that’s a challenge for students and teachers alike,” she adds.

The Art of Slowing Down isn’t solely a response to this digital disruption. Its exercises are grounded in traditions that date back thousands of years in some cases. But its curriculum dovetails with a growing campuswide effort to help students focus less on screens and more on their mental well-being. With a wellness café during finals week, Legos and playing cards in the common areas of dorms and formal restrictions on cellphones, faculty and staff are working to equip students with strategies and resources to calm and focus their minds amid busy schedules. 

“It’s really hard to train for a marathon,” Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Szu-Hui Lee says, “when you’re in the marathon.”

It’s news to no one that Exeter is rigorous. But Lee, who has worked at the school for 13 years, including nine in her present role, has noticed that “the pace just keeps getting faster,” and “the demands on our students are increasing.”

In conversations on the quad, Hofheinz and Woodard spoke about these mounting pressures on student learning and well-being. The increasingly competitive college application process, for example, can spur students to stuff their schedules with extracurricular activities. Digital multitasking, Hofheinz says, “is a big part of the story” too. 

In the years since the onset of COVID19, Hofheinz has noticed students struggling to concentrate on an idea, a task, a conversation or even a game. This has become a central focus in her religion, ethics and philosophy classes: “How to help students build those muscles again,” she says, “to have the patience with themselves and the world to be able to actually read, which takes time; or to think through an idea, which takes time; or to sit with a question that doesn’t have an immediate answer, or maybe any clear answer, which also takes time. And that’s very, very hard.” 

Eventually, Woodard broached the idea of designing a course more deliberately tailored to this kind of work. She had spoken with poet Marilyn Nelson in October 2024, when Nelson visited Exeter for a Lamont Poetry Series reading. Woodard learned that Nelson had once taught a class that blended poetry and meditation at the United States Military Academy at West Point. At the beginning of each session, students meditated in silence for five minutes to help clear their minds for creative work. They were assigned to do the same at home for 15 minutes — no small task in such a rigorous, highly structured environment. But as the semester went on, the cadets journaled about their experiences at greater and greater lengths. And the long-term effects of the class were, in some cases, profound: Some of Nelson’s students later reported that they had maintained their meditative practices for years, including during their military service.

Woodard, a poet and yoga instructor, appreciated Nelson’s joining the meditative and creative processes. She wondered if she could introduce a similar course at Exeter. It would start, like Nelson’s classes, with silence. “I think yoga is a practice of attention,” Woodard says. And she agrees with Patrick Rosal, another visiting Lamont Poet in 2024, that poetry is also “a practice of attention.” “It begins with that,” she says.

Gloria Mark, the author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity and the Substack newsletter “The Future of Attention,” started studying the intersections of technology, multitasking and distraction more than two decades ago. In 2003, she watched office workers toggle between screens every two and a half minutes or so, which was one finding in a paper titled, “Constant, Constant, Multitasking Craziness.” 

By 2012, she found screen-switching was even more prevalent, with the average attention span dropping to 75 seconds. Four years later, Mark’s research team discovered the average had plunged to 47 seconds (the median was 40 seconds). Even more jarringly, Mark and her collaborators revealed that it could take office workers an average of 25 minutes to return to the same task after an interruption. 

And this disruption wasn’t confined to the workplace. Mark co-authored a study that found college students were switching tasks twice as often as office workers, leading to more stress and diminished productivity. The more time students looked at their phones inside and outside of the classroom, the lower their grades were. 

“We may have the illusion that we are doing more and that our human capacity has expanded when we shift our attention, or multitask, but actually we are doing less,” Mark writes in Attention Span. “Multitasking has repeatedly been shown to be associated with lower performance when objectively measured.” 

Although scientists have not established a causal link between the rise of technology in daily activities and the decline of our attention spans over the past two decades, Mark says, “I would be shocked if there was not a relationship.” 

In the summer of 2024, Exeter faculty members were encouraged to read another seminal text on that potential relationship, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. The book argues that a “phone-based childhood” has replaced a “play-based childhood” and contributed to a documented rise among young people in mental illness and obstacles to learning, including attention fragmentation.

The book helped inspire more conversations about phone use at Exeter. After collecting survey feedback from students, parents, faculty and staff, the school instituted a new policy this academic year. It mandates that cellphones “be stored completely out of sight” during all required student appointments, including classes, labs and assemblies. Still, it’s not a blanket ban. Phones are allowed during meals, transportation to games, club meetings and optional gatherings, among other settings.

“A lot of our peer schools have adopted more rigorous or restrictive cellphone policies, and we have not gone in that direction,” Dean of Students Ashley Taylor says. “With both cell phones and artificial intelligence, I think we are less inclined to suggest they are good or bad, but instead  to really focus with our students on being intentional in how we use them.” 

She mentioned that Max Stossel, who founded an organization that aims to help teens and schools effectively navigate social media, had told students at assembly to ask themselves, “Am I using my phone or is my phone using me?” 

“I think that’s something we’ve really tried to work with the students on,” Taylor says, “rather than just restricting, trying to empower them with information that helps them make some good, healthy choices, knowing that these devices really aren’t going anywhere.” 

For example, students asked the dean’s office to bring back a voluntary “phonefree Fridays” program that debuted last year. If students turn in their phones at assembly in the morning and refrain from retrieving them before the end of the day, they’re entered into a prize raffle. Similarly, students can use a cellphone “parking lot” at the library if they want to study without their devices. 

Szu-Hui Lee supports this approach of empowering students when it comes to making decisions regarding phones. “I don’t want to pathologize the kids just because they grew up with technology,” she says. “Let’s not shame them for that, but let’s educate them about how to navigate it.” 

Lee and her colleagues in Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) want to “build a toolbox of strategies that students can use to cope, to regulate their emotions, to do self-care.” 

That includes the trial use of digital resources like Calm, an app that helps users manage stress and sleep. They also recommend turning to music, books, painting, exercise or any number of other activities away from screens. Students can be “too reliant on their phones as their tool,” Lee says. 

One day during finals week this winter, the toolbox included writing affirmations and snapping Polaroid pictures with smiling friends. More than 200 students visited stations at a wellness café set up by the library, CAPS and the Health and Human Development Department. “It reminds me that kids want opportunities to slow down when they can,” Lee says. 

She was pleased to learn about The Art of Slowing Down, as she has long been a proponent of the science behind that approach. “Slowing down is just as important as being in the race, because that slowing down allows you to gain the skills you need,” Lee says. “It allows your body to rest and recover, so that you can continue at this peak performance level.”

It’s vital for creativity, Woodard says: “As artists and thinkers and creators, you need to be able to be present.”

During winter term, Katie Loghinov ’27 took a religion, ethics and philosophy course on happiness. The class, taught by Kaitlyn Martin Fox, explained why it was important to be attentive. Essentially because “every moment you’re in has the potential to be something really profound and meaningful,” says Loghinov, who is from the Bay Area and describes herself as a “future-oriented person.” 

“I’m never really present in the moment,” she says, “and I find that I’m robbed of a lot of good experiences because of that. I’m either worrying or I’m ruminating.” 

Loghinov attributes some of this distraction to the digital sphere. Like many of her classmates, she can find herself spending lots of time on social media. “Even when I’m not scrolling,” she says, “there’s just this stimulation that you get from Instagram or whatever that’s kind of in the back of your mind and creating this busyness feeling.” 

But the message from the course on happiness about valuing the present moment resonated deeply with her. “I took a lot away from that class, and I wanted to find a way to actually apply those ‘whys’ that I learned into  ‘how,’” Loghinov says. 

So in the spring, she enrolled in The Art of Slowing Down. She was drawn to the technology-free course and its invitation to practice free-writing — composing without stopping or editing for extended periods of time — and clustering, a form of mind mapping that links words and ideas to spur creative work. The idea is for students to observe not just what they create, Hofheinz says, but also how they create, recording their thought processes along the way to see what works best for them. “What does happen to creativity, to your ability to think and write and be together, when you do just settle?” she asks. “What type of practices will help you build back the focus, build back your ability to pay attention and give that gift of togetherness or presence to other people or ideas or your own writing?”

The students aren’t just learning tactics from figures in the literary world. Woodard and Hofheinz are drawing from, among other sources, the engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh; the mindfulness practices of Plum Village; the Christian mysticism of Julian of Norwich; and texts and teachings from the yogic tradition. Before the spring term, Woodard was particularly excited to read from Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Walk and perhaps have students experience a walking meditation. She hopes to ingrain the notion that stillness is less a physical state than a state of mind. 

“I do a lot of thinking while I’m moving, driving, walking, but I think that can be meditative in its own way,” Woodard says. In whatever form it takes for them, she says, students have to learn to carve out time for this stillness. Sebastian Ting ’26 hopes to carry practices from the class with him beyond Exeter, aiming to “really slow down and try to be more present in times of struggle.”

Loghinov has been practicing mindfulness more on her own as she pursues an interest in filmmaking. “Honestly, it’s starting to change my life,” she says. “I’m creating space for new ideas and new experiences that I wouldn’t have been able to feel if I was too caught up in the past or the present and not being attentive in every moment.”

When I arrived as Interim Principal on July 1, 2018, everyone knew I was grieving the recent loss of my wife, Mary. I think few, if any, understood I was worried that without Mary at my side I might not succeed.

Then the most remarkable thing happened. Everyone on campus welcomed me — you might even say embraced me — in my new role. The Trustees gave me their full confidence and, importantly, room to do the job.

A sense of belonging is just as important to a principal as it is to every student and adult at our school. The acceptance I felt from colleagues, and support I felt from trustees, gave me the belief that I did indeed belong here, and that I could do the job.

I was nervous when it came time to deliver my first Opening Assembly address, but it was exhilarating to see the students cheer the faculty procession, and I felt encouraged by their warm reception when I introduced myself as “your Interim Principal.” I also remember well the students’ enthusiastic response at the end, when I announced the renaming of the Academy Center in honor of Elizabeth Phillips.

That fall, I set about doing my job the same way I have done other jobs: I worked hard and tried to treat people well. I had the advantages every principal at Exeter has: a compelling school mission; strong institutional values; talented and wise  faculty; a dedicated workforce; caring and committed trustees; and a shared conviction that our decisions and actions must always be based on the interests and needs of our students. My familiarity with the school and gratitude for how Exeter had changed my life were additional advantages.

I recall vividly numerous interactions I had with alumni and parents that first fall, at Exeter Leadership Weekend and Family Weekend and on other occasions. Our alumni care deeply about our school and ask tough questions. So do our parents. I was grateful, and I was encouraged when my responses to hard questions and statements about the mission and values of the school resonated with these audiences. Such moments added to my confidence in saying “yes” when I was asked to serve as the 16th principal of the Academy.

Effective leadership requires an inclination to listen and a willingness to decide. Like knowledge and goodness, both are required; one without the other is either weak or dangerous for an institution. I have tried to practice both and have been effective only insofar as I have done both.

Everything we have accomplished during my tenure as principal we have accomplished together. In every decision and every action, you can see the influence, hard work and contributions of many others, both on and off campus.

Together, we have touched many lives these past eight years, and we have done work that will affect the lives of students for years to come. The work we have done has added purpose and meaning to our lives. We have every reason to be grateful. I certainly am grateful, and I am also mindful each day that my being here was Mary’s last gift to me.

I leave my role as principal much the way I left Exeter as a graduating senior many years ago: with profound gratitude for what I have learned and the friendships I have gained, and deep appreciation for how my time at Exeter has once again changed my life. I also leave with the belief that Exeter is and always will be a part of me, and that I will always belong here.

Decades ago, an aunt gifted Madelyn Postman ’90 a family tree detailing an ancestry she knew little about. Intrigued, she began digging into her family’s history, ultimately engaging a professional genealogist. That research evolved into a family memoir, Staring into the  Sun: Stories from a Chinese American Family 18952015. Featuring her great-grandfather’s journey from a Chinese village to becoming a self-made millionaire in the U.S., her grandmother’s marriage to a renowned magician, and an intimate glimpse of her mother’s struggle with mental illness, the work deftly captures 20th-century American social and economic structures, immigration, and the building of new communities in California’s Bay Area. 

Postman, a sustainability consultant, drew on interviews with family members, visits to China and newspaper archives to write this engrossing mélange of memoir and creative nonfiction that is both a sharp-eyed take on her family’s dynamics as well as a deeply moving tribute to her relatives. 

We caught up with Postman in the run-up to the May publication of Staring into the Sun. 

You covered some big themes in the book — immigration, identity, social and economic structures. Did those topics come through organically as you were telling your family story? 

I think you can’t really extricate people from their surroundings and their context. I’m always struck by the world we’re born into, our cultural and our socioeconomic and geographic contexts. Part of the reason for writing this was to learn about history as well: I think if you see history through the eyes of an individual who lived through it, it gives you a much better grasp on what happened at that time.  I also really like to show how quotidian life —  culture, food, language, the way people dress — reflects  bigger themes and ideas. 

Part of your family story is a melding, through marriage, of two prominent Chinese American families. When did you realize that your family history was enmeshed in the history of California’s Bay Area?

I grew up knowing about my great-grandfather [entrepreneur and philanthropist] Joe Shoong and his [dry-goods store chain] National Dollar Stores. That was always part of my knowledge of the family background. It’s been interesting hearing from the other side of my family, my grandmother’s side, who married into that dynasty — I mean, they were well off, but nothing like the scale of the Shoongs. That’s what Henri’s chapter is all about.

I found the sections about your great- grandfather Henri and your great-grandmother Rose particularly compelling. How did you bring family members to such vivid life, some of whom you never met? 

My cousin Michael remembers Henri really well, so he captured Henri’s personality for me. Rose died in the ’50s, but my great-aunt Celia, who just turned 100, told me about Rose, how feisty she was. I used Celia’s interview as well as photos of Rose. In those, she looks very unhappy and sort of stiff. That was probably the chapter I had the most fun with because Rose is a really unlikable character. I leaned into that and had fun with it, showing her conflicts. 

Were there particular challenges that arose as you were researching the book?

It’s challenging writing about the people who are alive, not wanting to offend them. But you also don’t want to write about them in a flat way, only putting them in a good light. I’ve hurt some people by being too honest, but it didn’t create any lasting rifts. People have actually been very open with information — I don’t think there have been family secrets that people are trying to hide — but a couple of people wanted to be anonymous.

Why did you decide to only tell the stories of your Chinese American relatives in this collection?

Finding the voice for this project was tricky. At first, I wrote myself in the third person; after a manuscript assessment, I changed the chapters that I was in into memoir pieces — they became more emotionally powerful. With the narrative nonfiction chapters, I used Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and Story Genius, really helpful books in terms of plotting and structure. Bouncing between memoir and creative nonfiction, I got to the Staring into the Sun chapters, and realized,  “This will stand on its own, as one story about half of my family.” For the other half, I’m working on  a novel. 

You published chapters of this book on The Spark, your podcast and Substack newsletter, where you also share interviews with other writers. How much has input  from fellow writers motivated and shaped your work? 

In all spheres of life, I really believe in community, and I’ve become quite active in the writing community. I was pretty isolated and working on my own until around 2022, and then I started to do some courses on writing a synopsis, writing about  conflict and tension, all these different kinds of online courses. On one of the courses, somebody in the chat said, “There’s a podcast called The Shit No One Tells You About Writing,” and that’s been an amazing resource. I listened to every episode. They give so many tips on the publishing world and writing, and they do author interviews, which is a great way to learn about writing craft. You can get so much from a community of writers, and you give back to that as well, being a good literary citizen. 

​​How has your background in branding  and communications influenced your approach to writing?

They’re very different things in terms of writing — different zones, different headspaces. For narrative writing, I really have to have focused time, to get into a flow; I need bigger chunks of time, and it feels like I’m using completely different parts of my brain. It is more time intensive and energy intensive.

Did you learn anything new about yourself writing this book?

It was quite cathartic and therapeutic to write about the family, and about my mother’s death in  particular. And I think my view of myself changed: I wouldn’t have called myself a writer going into  this, and I definitely am a writer coming out of it. 

Finally, what do you carry with you from your time at Exeter? 

Prep year I got an English award for a story about my brother … and there was another story that was about him and my grandparents. This is exactly the stuff I’m still interested in, and it goes back to Exeter! Having that encouragement to write made a difference: I had Peter Greer and Rex McGuinn, both just incredible teachers. I think learning how to write is indispensable in all areas of life. 

And something else from Exeter which is really important is the Harkness system, learning to speak up and be in a conversation where you’re building on people’s points, learning that sometimes you need to interrupt them. I’m really aware of how a lot of women don’t speak and don’t interrupt, when sometimes people have to be interrupted because otherwise you can’t get a word in edgewise. That is also something I use every day.

At Exeter, most of our interactions with teachers take place in settings such as Harkness discussions, office hours or the learning center. While these interactions are valuable, they often don’t focus on the unique aspects of each faculty member. During my four years at Exeter, the most meaningful conversations I’ve had with faculty have occurred outside the classroom: specifically, casual talks with teachers over lunch in the dining hall or the Office of Multicultural Affairs. 

In those moments, I learned about their interests, experiences before coming to Exeter, and the paths that led them here. These conversations with faculty helped me see them beyond their classroom roles. When Dean Camlius told me that most students don’t interact with faculty outside class, I began thinking about ways to create an environment that encourages students to do so. After pitching my idea to Dean Taylor and Dean Hernández, Table Talk was created to give more students the opportunity to connect and have honest dialogues with faculty.

The structure of a typical Table Talk meeting is intentionally informal. I usually begin the meeting by asking the faculty guest a question about something they enjoy outside of teaching or why they chose to work at Exeter. The opening question leads into a broader conversation, and as students begin  asking their own questions, the discussion develops organically.

As the conversation unfolds, faculty often share stories about their lives, careers and experiences before Exeter. These stories frequently surprise students Marcus Lopez ’26 (far left) and friends outside of the Class of 1945 Library 18 because they reveal sides of teachers that we rarely see in the classroom. For example, in one meeting, Mr. Campbell talked about his experience as a DJ during college and how music was a major part of his life before he became a teacher.  In another meeting, Dr. Gronau discussed how faculty members think about certain aspects of campus life and what it is  like to work at a school like Exeter. 

The response from students has been extremely positive. Many students leave the meetings saying they discovered that they have more in common with faculty than they expected. Others say that hearing these personal stories makes teachers feel more approachable and  relatable. One of the biggest takeaways  is the sense of humanization that happens through these conversations. Instead of seeing faculty only as authority figures or as the people grading our work, students begin to see them as individuals with interesting backgrounds, hobbies and life experiences.

Ultimately, Table Talk has helped strengthen connections between students and faculty on campus. I believe these relationships are an important part of what makes the Exeter community unique. Table Talk has helped build many meaningful connections, and I am excited to continue growing the  program during my senior spring term.

let me off

at the sigh, the painted-in locus

on no map

wildness chopped up

and thrown in the river

wainscoting in old houses, drapes stained

and smelling of

shoe polish

the warrior spirit

a bookmark in the manual of restitution

comfort

like a wad

of milkweed cotton

keys glinting on the sill

Grace

high up in window boxes

the cold facts

the peeled

face of total loss

pigeon dumplings for supper

everybody

reading a book at the table

the one that

tells the whole story without getting blood on it.

Charlie Smith ’65 is the author of 10 poetry collections, eight novels and a book of novellas. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. This poem was originally published in Smith’s new collection, I Am Your Lifeguard: New and Selected Poems.

When given the opportunity to write remembrances about David Dimmock, dozens of alumni responded. It did not matter if their memories were from the classroom, the dormitory, or the x-country team; the common denominator was of a kind, caring, gentle, and thoughtful teacher important to their Exeter experience. Soft-spoken and thoughtful, David went about the business of teaching and coaching with quiet dedication. Never calling attention to himself, he faithfully fulfilled his responsibilities. No muss. No fuss. He was what an older generation might have called a gentleman, a gentle man.

Born on Independence Day in 1939, Dave Dimmock grew up in Connecticut, graduating from New London High School and then attending the University of Connecticut where he earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering.  From 1962 to 1967, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Having risen to the rank of Captain and having completed his military service, David accepted his first teaching appointment, working as an Instructor of Mathematics at the University of Vermont.  In July 1972, he began a career at Exeter, an appointment he cherished for the next twenty-seven years. 

Writing on the occasion of David’s retirement in 1999, Ty Tingley commended David on his years of steadfast service: “you have lived values that we seek to inspire in our students— loyalty, hard work, service to others, kindness, patience, civility.”  As Principal, Ty particularly appreciated Dave’s selflessness: “In a world increasingly preoccupied with attitudes of entitlement, you have asked little of others or of the school.”  David’s service, he noted, was rooted in a preoccupation with teaching and learning, qualities that informed his work in the classroom, in the dormitories, and on the athletic fields.  

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of David’s teaching appointment, Dean of Faculty, Jack Herney, underscored the importance of David’s work on committees, perhaps the least appreciated of the many tasks undertaken by boarding school faculties: “You bring to any group a fundamental honesty and an instinct for the direct approach, not long on words perhaps but distinguished by clarity of thinking, absent of pretension, grounded in principle and without any hidden agenda—just the straight scoop.”  The list of committees, on which David served–often as chair–touched upon virtually every aspect of boarding school life: Admissions, Prize, Discipline, Financial Aid, Milton Mountain, and Commencement.  Invested always in the best interests of our community, David was a colleague we trusted, a teacher we admired, a friend upon whom we could invariably rely. 

From the moment David arrived in Exeter, he knew he had found his calling.  In a letter to Principal Kurtz, just two years after David had joined the Math Department, David proclaimed, the job is “very demanding, but at the same time, very satisfying . . . I can honestly say there is no other work I would rather be doing.”  David expressed appreciated the Academy’s fundamental values: the Harkness pedagogy with its small, discussioncentered classes; a generous scholarship program that “enables us to have a diversified student body;” the strength of a caring, dedicated teaching faculty; and the many opportunities for students and faculty to interact in and beyond the classroom. Given the opportunity to share memories of David, dozens of Exonians responded. Maxwell Grant, class of ’88, remembers first semester Prep year.  He likens “those first few weeks of an Exeter education” to “drinking out of a firehose, even though our first teachers knew it and did their best to . . . keep down the sheer pressure of it.”  For Max, Harkness Math bright and early on Saturday mornings felt like repeatedly “re-discovering and shock-testing the Pythagorean theorem.” From the young Prep’s perspective, “we might as well have been calculating the return trajectory of the Space Shuttle.” But Dave Dimmock knew “we could do it, and he would cajole and murmur and nod . . ., walking the space between the table and the blackboard, listening for the next step and floating over to the board” to write down our collective thoughts. There “was a kind of ballet to it all,” Mr. Dimmock allowing the “moment to sink in, letting us hold it as a tribute to our own ingenuity. But of course, the true ingenuity was his.” While Max never did flourish as a mathematician, he did take away something special: “Mr. Dimmock showed me . . . the poetry of math, the thrill of discovery, and the eloquence of quiet encouragement.”   

Paul Wilson, Class of ’89, echoes Maxwell Grant’s experience with Mr. Dimmock, who “was available at any hour” to meet with his students, helping them work step-by-step through challenging math concepts. Susan Cole Ross, Class of ’77, remembers Mr. Dimmock for his “kindness, kindness, kindness.”   David “had a generous way of making one feel like the most important person as he gently bowed a bit for full eye contact with a young coed in the early days of coeducation.”  More than forty years after graduating from Exeter, Jonathan Bean, Class of ’81, believes Dave Dimmock was “one of the kindest and gentlest souls” he ever met. Suzy Welch, Class of ‘78, experienced a calculus epiphany with Mr. Dimmock in her upper year: “I will never forget the day that a calc concept finally clicked for me, and I literally exclaimed, ‘OH I GET IT! IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL!’ out loud in class. My fellow students laughed, and I was a little embarrassed, but Professor Dimmock looked directly at me with a smile — and I am sure of this — tears of joy in his eyes. His purpose was to lead young people to just such moments of discovery. From that moment on, I understood that math was a magical language all its own, and that some people were born to teach it.” 

David’s commitment to teaching extended well beyond the classroom..  As Kirk Stambler’s, Class of ’76, advisor in Dunbar Hall, David was “unfailingly kind and approachable,” making Kirk’s “transition to the Academy as seamless and comfortable as it could possibly be.”  Neil Kaye, Class of ’76, credits Dave with getting him through calculus, and perhaps more importantly, making Dunbar a warm and welcoming place: “When he was on duty, he always made slice & bake chocolate chip cookies for us.  That was the perfect welcoming touch and made everyone feel at home.”  Zack Gleit, Class of ’83, recalls Mr. Dimmock’s love for the movie, “Chariots of Fire.”  He “loved the cross-country part of the storyline, . . . loved the theme music,” which was often heard coming from his study. It was clear from the note Zack sent to us that David modeled something special for the students under his care: the passage of time only strengthened their appreciation for his civility, kindness, and generosity. 

Among David’s many Academy responsibilities, coaching Cross-country and distance running in outdoor track occupied a special place in his heart.  In the fall of 1977, he succeeded Ralph Loveshin, a legendary figure, as head coach of the boys’ cross-country team.  Jamie Trowbridge, Class of ’78, and David’s first team captain, appreciated Coach Dimmock’s strong work ethic. Always well prepared, he worked tirelessly “recording and analyzing the results from our workouts and races,” this at a time before computers when such analysis was done by hand. “He gave his time and attention equally to every runner on the team.  He was constant with words of encouragement and quick to recognize improvement of any kind.  Our team won some races, and we lost some.  He did not seem to care about that.  He just tried to help every runner do his best.”  Nick Caruso, Class of ’77, has a clear memory of Mr. Dimmock’s “blue Volvo station wagon . . . patiently waiting for us as he clocked our times along the route.”  Nick says Mr. Dimmock was  “a very gentle soul. For our home XC meets, instead of a traditional track starting gun . . .  he used a cow bell to signal the start.”   

Judd Levingston, Class of ’82, ran cross-country for three seasons.  He remembers David keeping “meticulous team records in pencil from year to year so any team member (or alumnus!) could ask him how they had performed against an opposing school on their course or ours.”  Encouraging us to run with “a sense of adventure and abandon” and to savor “our youth and fitness,” David would sometimes borrow a school van to “drive the team to Apple Annie’s where we’d go for a six to eight-mile workout run on the roads and then finish things off at the orchard by taking turns around the cider press.” A coach who encouraged his runners to be the best they could be, David led the squad to an Interschols championship in the fall of 1979. Exeter’s harriers placed four runners in the top eight in a field of twelve teams and eighty runners. For four seasons, Nick Warne, Class of’80, ran cross country and track under Coach Dimmock.  He notes that for distance runners, “ there is a constant sense of camaraderie which Mr. Dimmock encouraged throughout the year. During cross-country, there is an even stronger sense of team since we train, travel and race as a team with strong dependencies” upon one another.  As runners, we had an identity and a community. This identity only mattered to us, and to Mr. Dimmock, but we owned it and it helped to shape who we became. Nick and his teammates took special pleasure in winning the Interschols championship in 1979 not only for their personal achievement but because it recognized all of Coach Dimmock’s hard work. 

Former Modern Language Instructor, Brian Morgan worked with David in coaching Track & Field.  He notes that “David was an avid distance runner himself, not so much as a competitor, but rather as a form of relaxation.  He would seek out small marathon or halfmarathon events in bucolic surroundings, often in Western Massachusetts, and run them for pure enjoyment.  Closer to home, Rick Parris and I would often join him for a 10k jaunt in the Exeter environs, using back roads and dirt tracks whenever possible.” 

David was also an avid cyclist.  Stephanie Girard remembers joining David and Rick Parris on a bike ride.  At the time, she figured she would have no difficulty keeping pace with “two men 20 years her senior.”  Their trek took them over back roads to UNH, where they picnicked on the university lawn before cycling back to town. Stephanie says, “We got back to campus with just about enough time for me to “stretch, shower, change, and get over to the opening faculty party in the library. I think I lasted about 45 minutes; I was so beat.” The next fall, the three took a long, languorous ride south to Maudslay State Park near Newburyport.”  Though more physically and mentally prepared for this second outing, Stephanie admits she “was still the one panting the most at the end of the day. David looked as if he hadn’t even broken a sweat.” David shared his enthusiasm for running and cycling not only with colleagues but also with the young people he mentored in the Big Brother/Big Sister program. David once rode his bicycle from Seattle, Wash. across the entire country, back home to Exeter, N.H.  

A deeply religious man, he also had an abiding interest in sacred music, and for several years, sang in the Congregational Church choir.  When the calendar allowed, he often ventured abroad to explore European churches and cathedrals, taking special pleasure in attending evensong services. On one trip to the United Kingdom, David travelled to the village of Dymock, the ancestral home of the Dimmock family.  It is fitting that this idyllic village has a rich cultural heritage, having been home to the Dymock Poets, a group of writers which included Rupert Brooke. 

For many years after retirement and then living at the River Woods community of Exeter, David stayed connected to the Academy. In his quiet and understated way, he let the Dean of Student’s office know of his willingness to tutor struggling math students for no compensation. For many years, these struggling students benefitted from David’s wisdom, caring, and especially kindness.  

Having lived a life of loving service, David Dimmock died in November, 2022.  A headstone has been placed at the East Neck Cemetery in Waterford, Connecticut.  David is survived by his sister, Shirley Dimmock Perregaux; brother-in-law, Paul Perregaux; brother, Wayne Dimmock, and by sixteen nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.  

I move that this Memorial Minute be submitted to David’s siblings and spread upon the minutes of the faculty. 

Respectfully submitted, Eric S. Bergofsky, Co-Chair John D. Herney Brian Morgan Douglas G. Rogers, Co-Chair