StoryCorps’ Great Thanksgiving Listen of 2016 wraps up this weekend. StoryCorps is an oral history project with a mission to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections with people and create a more just and compassionate world.”

The Great Thanksgiving Listen of 2016  follows up on the first Great Thanksgiving Listen of 2015, facilitated by StoryCorps’ release its app in 2015. The app has lots of stories to listen to, and it also walks users through the process of preparing and recording their own interviews:

Choose someone to interview. Pick great questions. Find a quiet place to record. Listen closely.

StoryCorps seeks to make interviewing a standard part of the high school curriculum, based on the success of the 2015 Thanksgiving Listen:

A 14-year-old in Georgia heard what it was like for her grandmother to go to bed hungry; students in Colorado heard one man’s experience of enlisting during the Vietnam War; and a teen in Louisiana found out that her grandparents got engaged at a drive-in movie.

There’s no reason this endeavor should be limited to high school students. Really, it’s for anyone who wants to make a deeper human connection by listening to someone and helping them memorialize their story. And the interview need not be a Forrest Gump-like overview of historical moments. The ABA Mentorship Project has teamed with StoryCorps to record narratives on mentorship in the legal profession here. The University of South Carolina School of Law’s Pro Bono Program is partnering with StoryCorps to record lawyers’ and students’ stories related to serving the Hispanic community as well as advocating for LGBT clients. 

Outside the boundaries of required classwork, law students may not be able to record someone’s story in the stressful period between Thanksgiving and the end of final exams. But if finals end in mid-December, the holiday break is an ideal time to rest and recharge by listening to someone else. It builds interviewing skills and may help students clear their heads. More importantly, it creates a human connection and participates in StoryCorps’ mission of creating a more just and compassionate world.