This article is contextualised within the field of post-graduate, continuing teacher education in South Africa, through an essentially "distanced", that is, part-time, mixed-mode teaching and learning model. It draws on a broader phenomenological research study into the experiences of students taking a one semester module, "Reading and Writing Academic Texts", specifically designed to promote students' academic literacy development in the Bachelor of Education Honours programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The article uses data related, however, only to the embedded experiences of sacrifice and shame as students "lived" their experience of studying according to this model. It does this in order to argue three main points. The first is for greater cognizance of the "lived" consequences for students of studying part-time through essentially "distanced" models of delivery. The second is for recognition of the impact of student experience on the formal, "intended" curriculum, and the third, by implication, is for recognition of the concomitant consequences for the wider political project of teacher education through these models, particularly in developing countries such as South Africa.