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This article examines the practices, norms and values that constrain or enable successful participation of undergraduate students at a South African university undergoing a radical change. We look at four constructs about the resources that [University of Witwatersrand] Wits students draw on when they negotiate their integration into the Wits culture of academic performance. The four constructs are: (i) internal regulation, which refers to the ways in which students experience the difference in relation to authority when compared to their school experiences; (ii) individual responsibility, which is related to the distribution of responsibilities between 'the student' and 'the institution' in relation to the process of learning and teaching; (iii) explicit and implicit rules, connected to the ways in which students get to understand how the Wits learning environment works; and (iv) re-visiting the familiar, which points to students' experiences of failure and alienation and how these experiences elicit past experiences of racial oppression.

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