This article discusses what it means to be a beginning teacher from the perspective of four mid-career entrants to the profession. Findings from this ethnographic study suggest that regardless of preservice teacher preparation or school districts' formal induction practices, newcomers experience a dramatic threshold or liminal phase among colleagues that can be disorienting and discouraging. The "as lived" experiences of participants in this study remind us that while beginning teaching can be a fleeting phase of cultural initiation, it also can be an intensely alienating passage that dampens newcomers' enthusiasm to thrive or even remain in the profession.