While the capstone experience of student teaching is sometimes perceived as a time where everything from one's teacher preparation neatly comes together, that is often not the case. Student teachers frequently find themselves positioned at the intersection of competing discourses as they consider: who am I, and what does that mean for how I teach? The current literature on the struggles of student teachers has frequently investigated their tensions in isolation or focused on the dichotomies of progressive versus conservative ideologies or teacher education versus K-12 schools. However, recent responses to that literature highlighted a need to take a more systemic view of the process of becoming a teacher in today's educational contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how student teachers understood the process of becoming teachers amid the meeting, clashing, and grappling of competing discourses. More specifically, I set out to understand how a particular group of student teachers felt themselves bumping up against competing discourses and how they perceived that to be influencing their identity work as aspiring educators. I designed this study primarily around a qualitative interview approach to inquiry as I worked to capture the lived experiences of seven student teachers across the 16 weeks of their student teaching practicum. The findings of this study revealed that these student teachers understood the process of becoming teachers to be full of multifaceted, intersecting tensions, dependent on their connections with others, and intertwined with who they were becoming as young adults. In the discussion of these themes, the concept of student teacher agency rose to the surface as I questioned: what agency did the student teachers felt they had in their process of becoming as they encountered complex webs of tensions, built relationships with significant others, and developed as young adults? This study contributed to the existing literature on teacher socialization as it considered ways teacher educators could cultivate agentic orientations among student teachers and create networks of support that positively inform their sense of agency as they transition into careers as educators. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]