This article describes a study of how students use first person pronouns in papers written for undergraduate courses in multiple disciplines. If prompted, students imitate some of the ways experts use first person to establish their authority; but just as often students use first person pronouns to express uncertainty or to reveal that they have less status than their audience. I argue that we can help students more closely approximate expert practices by making them aware of how experts use first person and by providing them with opportunities to use first person in those same ways.