The key element of auto-ethnography, as distinct from memoir and autobiography, is the positioning of the writer within the social, cultural, economic, and political framework of what is being observed. T. Voorhees saw immense value in this positioning for students today, especially newer college students who understand their relationship to higher education differently than the students of ten or twenty years earlier did. In this article Voorhees describes a study focused on answering the following questions: (1) How does the participation in an auto-ethnography based writing pedagogy foster the creation of participants' writing selves? (2) What role might an auto-ethnography based writing curriculum play in developing students' writing confidence? and (3) How might students use these tools enhance the quality of their writing? To answer these questions, Voorhees designed a multiple case study using four participants and their writing instructor. The study was conducted at a small private college in New England. An auto-ethnography pedagogy was piloted in all fifteen sections of the first course in the two-course first-year writing program. The basic premise of the pedagogy is that students, through various printed and visual media, would be exposed to a variety of ethnographic or ethnographic-like depictions of various cultures, and would then be asked to create an auto-ethnographic account of what it was like to grow up in their respective social contexts and what that means in terms of who they have become. The primary data source were semi-structured interviews conducted on the focus students and their professor. Students' writing (which included formal and informal assignments, journals, and in-class writing) and in-class observations constituted additional data sources. Three major themes emerged from the findings: (1) all of the participants provided data that supported the notion of a connection between writing, this course, and identity; (2) the increased level of confidence the participants gained in relationship to their ability to write; and (3) all of the participants felt that their writing quality had improved through activities in the course.