This article argues that we need richer conceptions of students as affective and embodied selves and a clearer theorisation of the role of emotion in educational encounters. These areas are currently under-researched and under-theorised in higher education. The first part of the article explores the literature on emotion. The second reports on a case study which aimed to map students' emotional journeys over their first year at university. These data highlight the importance of relationships, students' changing emotions over the year, their perceptions of their academic studies and understandings of life at university. The article concludes that it is important to understand the affective dimension in pedagogic encounters and the lifeworld of students, and that it is possible to do so without a collapse into therapeutic discourses. (Contains 1 table.)