This narrative is a construction of self as beginner, analysis of other as beginner, and a reformulation that attempts to combine and make mobile and immutable knowledge about beginning and beginners. Data were collected from: (1) 48 students in a beginning teacher education course who kept journals of their experiences; (2) student teachers' writings; (3) interviews with beginning teacher educators; and (4) the author's experiences. The paper emphasizes the beginner's feelings of aloneness, nervousness, uncertainty, lack of confidence, vulnerability, and overriding concern with planning and organizing. It notes the beginner's chronic state of experiencing unsafe interactions and sense of being judged about their competency. It describes the beginner's concern with surface structure or immediately evident details and their classification, rather than deep structure understandings. It also outlines the beginner's uncertainty about the usefulness of past schemas and uncertainty about which details are most important, which leads to a focus on all of the details. The paper also discusses the question of when people actually are beginners and proposes that people come to this world not as blank slates but with personality and talents which unfold and grow in response to their environment. (Contains 18 references.) (JDD)