This article examines ways in which more explicit connections might be forged between students' experiences as humanities students, and their experiences as part-time workers. The purpose is to connect particularisations of meaning with the development of a coherent whole, by using Van Oers' (1998) framework for contextualisation. It is argued that the meaning that humanities students derive from their academic studies is provided through the specifics of the context in which it is learned, and the relationships that the student discerns between this particularised meaning and its coherence with a wider whole. Similarly, the meaning that is derived from experiences of part-time work is provided by the specifics of the workplace context and the relationships that the student discerns between workplace meanings, and the particularised meanings from other contexts. Data gathered in Griffith University's "Workplace Learning Project" are re-analysed here to indicate how these relationships can be built in order to enrich meaning through its increasing coherence.