What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics

by Carlo Rotella

An eloquent and moving story about the value and the pleasures of intellectual exploration—and why it matters beyond the classroom.
 
At a time when college students and their parents often question the "return on investment" from humanities courses, accomplished feature writer and English professor Carlo Rotella invites us into the minds of a group of skeptical first-year students who are ultimately transformed by a required literature class. In What Can I Get Out of This? he follows thirty-three students through his class to provide an intimate look at teaching and learning from their perspectives as well as his own. The students' reluctance—"How does this get me a job?"—transforms into insight as they wrestle with challenging books, share ideas, discover how to think critically, and form a community. In all these ways, they learn how to extract meaning from the world around them, an essential life skill. Confronting skeptics of higher education, this compassionate and inspiring book reveals the truth of what students actually experience in college.

Genres: Education

223 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Dunstan McNutt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like other work in this genre, the author seems unaware of how different teaching at a place like Boston College is from teaching at the kind of university where 97-98% of college students attend. I felt like there were more insights about the literature the class focused on than there were insights about pedagogy, the importance of the liberal arts, or the complexities of teaching during the Spring 2020 semester. The NYT op ed Rotella wrote around the time this came out was quite good; I would recommend it over this book.

[Aidan Vick]

Carlo is the best!!

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written account of--and argument for--the study of literature in college in a discussion-based classroom. I do the same kind of work, and Rotella's account rings very true to me. (I've also taken some tips and some techniques that I will steal for the coming spring's classes.) But beyond ringing true, it is inspirational to me as a teacher, and I hope it will be reassuring to parents and students that their dollars are well-spent on an education that can help students to see, understand, and be an active part of the world around them. Rotella demonstrates that great teaching is a craft--one that can be learned, and one appropriate for the dedication of a lifetime.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good coverage of the granular, everyday business of an Intro to Lit class--highlighting methodologies, strategies, and justifications--while also mapping out the larger initiatives of design. Thorough in both some expansive approaches to particular texts and to the students who receive those designs, always with a focus on how the students can come into their own as engaged learners.