In negotiating the transition to Higher Education, students bring core expectations from their A-level study that are likely to be different to the lived reality of university study. Bridging the transition to university requires an in-depth understanding of the differences between the imagined and the reality; the expectations and the experience. Psychology students' perspectives of their first-year experiences were collected through activity-oriented focus groups (Colucci, 2007). Discrepancies between expectations and reality were expressed in terms of the degree of autonomy required, the nature of "the lecture," and achievement. In many cases, students displayed contradictory perspectives, desiring autonomy but also wanting the security of the more dependent approach to learning they have been socialised into. It is suggested that first-year students are passing through a key period of transition, and during this period of "liminality" they are attempting to leave one identity behind and instead inhabit a new, more autonomous identity.