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!!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been teaching for 28 years; I am a sucker for any book that purports to be about teaching. I would say that the vast majority are not worth the paper they are written on. With that said, I found Professor Rotella's memoir about a semester teaching his Lit. Core class to be one of the absolute best books about teaching literature that I have ever read. Pragmatic, practical, optimistic, humorous, and honest, Rotella admirably punctures a lot of the doom-n-gloom narratives about teaching the Humanities, and about the state of the college classroom, from the arena of his classroom at BC. Orof. Rotella is, quite simply, the kind of teacher we would want to have in a classroom, and the kind of teacher I try to aspire to be.
The ONLY reason I withheld a star is that I am not sure if the audience for this book extends beyond educators. It really gets into the nitty-gritty of the classroom, the students, and at times the books they are reading (some of which sound deadly boring to me).

[Martyn Beeny · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics is a thoughtful, timely, and deeply human exploration of higher education in an era increasingly focused on practicality and measurable outcomes.

Carlo Rotella tackles a question familiar to many students and educators alike: What is the value of studying literature and the humanities in a world obsessed with career preparation and return on investment? Through an intimate account of a group of first year students navigating a required literature course, Rotella demonstrates how intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, discussion, and reflection can transform skepticism into engagement.

Rather than relying on abstract arguments about the importance of the humanities, he shows readers the process unfolding in real time through the experiences of students themselves.

Insightful, compassionate, and highly relevant, this book offers a compelling defense of liberal education and the enduring value of learning how to think deeply about the world.

[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.