How to do it: organize a reunion of your undergraduate classmates.

How and where do you begin to trace up to 150 medical graduates, firm friends and daily companions for six years, but now scattered world wide? How to inform, inspire, and then encourage them to travel miles-all for an evening, a day, or a weekend's immersion in nostalgia for the time before mortgages, children, and on call began? The initial answer is simple-start early and form a committee, ideally 18 months before the desired date of the reunion. Most reunions are based around decades. The 10 year reunion is the most enthusiastically supported, and interest diminishes during subsequent years. Should you put yourself in charge of procedures, then the first step is to appoint 6-10 people to the committee. Inevitably no one will have experience in this area, so go rather for people who are enthusiastic and who live within driving distance for the frequent meetings that will be required. Much of the organising and attendant paperwork for the reunion will require secretarial, photocopying, and word processing resources, so if these are not directly available to you, choose your committee members to include someone who has these facilities. General practitioner members are most likely to help by raising funds for the event from pharmaceutical companies, whereas a hospital consultant is more likely to have access to the secretarial skills. The long run up Once the committee has convened, the first meeting will have to tackle the inevitable questions of who, what, when, and where, preferably in that order. The "who" calls for some detective work. We found the best way to get an initial list of the graduates in our year was to approach our university's examinations board for the names of all those who sat finals with us. Doing this identified those who were definitely in our year and avoided the embarrassment of missing those who failed to graduate. This then gave us an initial database. Fortunately, our profession requires us to keep ourselves on various lists such as the principals list in general practice and particularly the Medical Register and Medical Directory. Consulting these will immediately throw up 90% of the year's full names and addresses, the "lost lambs" being those working abroad, those not practising, or who have reregistered under a married name. So put these names on a separate list and send it out along with the letter to everyone. In most cases someone will know …