This article explores doctoral students' emotional experience as they learn about conducting qualitative research. Emotions emerging from a shared learning experience provided doctoral students with opportunities to reflect on their experience as qualitative researchers and on the practice of qualitative research. Explicit links are made between students' learning how to do research and their research as learning, to provide an example of experiential and engaged teaching practice within a doctoral program in management. A study of a module on qualitative research focused on the emotional experience of being a doctoral student, captured a range of emotions, and offered students the opportunity to understand the importance and value of emotional reflexivity within their qualitative research.