This article examines student teachers' experiences of writing emotionally through the lens of teacher-writer memoirs. The participants were 99 postgraduate student teachers on a sociology of teaching module in an initial primary teacher education programme in the Republic of Ireland. Analysis of journal responses indicated how student teachers shaped and reshaped their emergent identities through discourse, memory, emotions, and personal biography and along a values-action continuum. Individual freedom was evidenced in moving towards danger and new ways of doing things. Conformity was evidenced in maintaining the status quo and familiar ways of doing things. Implications for teacher education renewal and reform are discussed. (Contains 1 figure.)