The purpose of this interpretivist qualitative study is to discover what factors influence first-year college students as they construct their text messages. Using grounded theory methodology, 11 first-year college students at a university in the Southeast were interviewed one-on-one and through text messaging in order to gain insight into influences that affected the construction of their text messages. The primary research question is what influences "first-year college students' construction of text messages?" Interviews, field observations, and document analysis provided rich data to increase understanding of the construction of text messages. This paper presents the process of the study including an interpretive analysis of findings. Ten themes surfaced through initial and focused coding processes shedding insight into the effect of audience, environment, and social impression on text messaging construction. Those themes are: audience; social impression; environment; value/meaning of text messaging; text versus talk or face-to-face interactions; adult/parent texting behavior; text message content; managing expectations; views on abbreviations; and connectivity. Additionally, eight subcategories emerged within the broad spectrum of audience including: premeditated construction; proofreading; code switching; interpretation; nature of audience (parent, professor/instructor, boss/coach, and friend). The data representation in this study is presented using a complex layering technique that provides all of the participant voices in a pastiche of their responses to a presented scenario. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]