College Minireunions: Getting to Know You Once Again

In June, the 50^th reunion of my college class is coming up.  Even though I won’t be going to the Big One, I made a 1500-mile trip to eat lunch with seven other women in the more intimate setting of a mini-reunion organized by a college friend of mine.. 


Colleges like Stanford, Wellesley, Vassar and Dartmouth are leading the way in encouraging their alums. to organize these regional events, more intimate than a major college reunion. Maybe the associations have just found one more way to prompt alums into giving to the alma mater but the events are not fundraisers. These get-togethers are a chance to talk, usually over lunch or dinner.

When I learned by mail that a college friend was organizing a mini in Los Angeles, I decided to go. The trip cost me my round trip plane fare from Mexico and other expenses but paid off in intangible ways. Besides, I took the chance to combine the mini with visiting a cousin and a friend I'd made later in life.

The mini-reunion lunch occurred on what turned out to be a bad hair day for me,  but the lunch afforded several satisfying results I couldn’t have expected:

• Two of the women present (we were eight in all) offered spontaneous comments on what they remembered of me back in the 1950s when I was a college student.
  




• I figured out that the seemingly most accomplishing lives were not necessarily the most satisfying..
  




• We all skirted controversial subjects in favor of maintaining a common bond even though we may have been on different sides of the fence politically or in lifestyle.
  




•  woman who was leaving early to avoid the Los Angeles rush hour paused to tell us about her passion, volunteering to support the local opera company. Her assertiveness prompted each of us to make a personal statement.