Last week, I went to a Souper Bowl Party. No, it’s not a typo; we had a soup party.1 When I decided in December that February should be full of small parties, some friends took me seriously and got the party on the calendar. There were five women: three made soup, one made bread, one brought desserts and drinks. We decided to do “surprise soup” and not say what soup we were bringing and ended up with three variations of the same kind of soup, so take note if you think a soup party sounds like a good idea.2 At some point during our soup eating, the conversation moved to what we were reading. When it was my turn to respond, I talked about the Earthsea novels and then cheerfully stated I was also reading 10,000 things for class. They laughed because they thought I was starting to name a book. My bad.3 Instead 10,000 Things for Class is an assortment, a conglomeration of articles and book chapters: sometimes whole books, sometimes books that are borrowed from the internet archive and sometimes old Rachel Held Evans blog posts.4
10,000 Things for Class is Redeeming Power and a chapter about the Montgomery bus boycott. It’s Your Daughters Shall Prophesy that gets moved to my shelf on gender and the Bible, and it’s the discovery of Together in Ministry, which is a book I had been longing for that has been sitting on my wishlist for two years.5 10,000 Things for Class is the book that I plowed through chapter after chapter of last quarter and barely understood a word. Nevertheless I managed to write something that sounded reasonably intelligent when I was required to write a forum post specifically about that resource. 10,000 Things for Class has convinced me that I should, on occasion, read things that are above my level and stick with them because they stretch me, and someday I will circle back to them and be surprised at how much I’ve grown.
10,000 Things for Class is the reading that I’m actually interested in but have to start skimming because I’m taking too long and there’s too much left to read that week. 10,000 Things for Class has filled up my bookshelf in my office and started piles in baskets and carts. The budding library makes me smile. 10,000 Things for Class is opening a syllabus every quarter that lists over 1,000 pages of required reading and momentarily panicking about squeezing that in around work and four boys and sleep and the immense amounts of food preparation required in our home.
10,000 Things for Class is learning how much reading mingles together, how one book for this class is interwoven with this article for another class and remembering to pull them apart before writing a forum post so that I can honor the word count by not explaining how I made these connections. It is falling asleep on the couch, waking up as my chin drops down to my chest and attempting to read some more before giving in. Apparently that has to happen three times before I decide it’s worth just going on to bed.
10,000 Things for Class is the cause of the long list of reading I want to do once seminary is finished in a few months and my reading time is my own. 10,000 Things for Class demands my time and my attention in a way that can’t be ignored and frequently repays me in ways I didn’t expect. 10,000 Things for Class has taught me the value of assembling a variety of resources, of supplementing my favorite authors with new voices, of reading things that I know I will disagree with and not being frightened by them.
10,000 Things for Class laughs at my longing to take better notes after reading. I already scribble marginalia and write “yikes” besides offensive quotes from pastors. I underline sentences and bracket whole paragraphs, and I have, just this year, started folding down page corners to make ideas easier to find. However the time for the note-taking I would like to do is taken up by finishing the 10,000 Things for Class.
10,000 Things for Class has taught me names and affiliations. The reading has introduced me to more writing, forming a family tree of sorts for the work.6 10,000 Things for Class has given me a love for footnotes because it’s bothersome to flip to the back to check a source but footnotes can be delightful. 10,000 Things for Class has owned my evenings, kept me company through family movies, been hauled around in my bag and pulled out at piano lessons, in restaurants, and at red lights. 7
10,000 Things for Class has more often than not been the bane of my existence for the past four years. It’s stopped me from going out, from getting more sleep, from playing. At the same time, 10,000 Things for Class has been a great guide and instructor. I’ve become a woman with new layers and new thoughts, an appreciation for diversity and story, an ability to linger over a work that is difficult and disagreeable.8 While the pace may be less rigid, I think I’ll keep 10,000 Things for Class on my list of reading even after I graduate.
Did you roll your eyes? My husband did.
It is a good idea. It was quite fun.
It was my desire to start a work titled “10,000 Things” that led to this post.
Reading them always makes me remember the time I listed the things I appreciated about her on Instagram. The feedback was…mixed.
It does make me want to take a reading vacation and just read everything on my wishlist. Imagine the things I want to know that I could learn that way!
This is for sure an Austin Kleon idea. I think it’s in Steal Like An Artist.
Only when I’m not driving. Don’t get carried away here.
Which is a gift especially in this social media age.
I feel so much of this with the 10,000 things for class. I wish I had so much more time for processing what I read and making notes that would help me retain what I read and allow me to link what I've learned from different sources and even classes / instructors in a more life-changing way.
Has Scrivener helped at all with this? I remember you mentioning you planned to give it a try last year.