This paper reflexively explores an initiatory period of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in a UK secondary school by a first-time researcher. Concern is expressed over the tendency to memorialise early encounters, the impression being given that reflexive accounts should be "saved" for later in the academic career, when previously suppressed emotions can be safely introduced to signal analytical sophistication and candour. Building on existing scholarship that seeks to offer a counter-narrative to this trend, the paper contributes further to this debate by interrogating the relationship between the research process and the biographical self, informed by a feminist epistemology stressing the usefulness of emotionality as a research tool. Fieldwork ethics are touched upon, and the paper concludes by querying attempts to formalise a method based in intersubjectivity.