This article draws on the transcripts of focus group interviews held with three groups of students, all in their final year of four-year Bachelor degrees. All had completed the professional experience requirements for their course. One group comprised education students, one group comprised nursing students, and the third was studying engineering. All were studying at the same university. Common across all three professional areas, the new entrants' experiences appear physically, psychologically, and emotionally, confronting. In addition, it seems that the power relations that structure workplace practices (including the performance assessment regimes in place in many workplaces) often structure the student-practitioner's behaviours in ways that can either conflict with the students' sense of themselves or go unacknowledged. The study indicates that students need to be provided with opportunities to explore these aspects of professional work. By making these dimensions of their practice explicit and open to interrogation students can be better assisted to develop and sustain reflective and ethically grounded professional practices. (Contains 3 figures and 1 endnote.)