In the United States, popular perceptions of the usefulness of anthropology range from unfamiliarity to skepticism. Nevertheless, undergraduate students continue to enroll in anthropology programs, and their reasons for doing so are of crucial interest not only to their institutions but to the discipline as a whole. Recognizing this to be an ethnographic research question, in 2018 the American Anthropological Association initiated an Undergraduate Research Fellowship and recruited student-researchers from five institutions, spanning field sites in two countries, to investigate the question, how do anthropology students prepare for life after graduation? The project relied on students’ unique ability to conduct fieldwork among their peers, and through their collaboration with the Association, they were able to make the student’s perspective visible among anthropologists more broadly. When the fellows had completed the fieldwork and write-up, we asked them to share their reflections on the process. Beginning with these reflections, which we take as primary autoethnographic data on the learning experience offered by the fellowship program, this paper considers the undergraduate research experience as a bottom-up teaching relationship in which students, faculty and Association staff worked together and learned from one another. Through our dialogue, it became clear that their participation had occasioned a shift in their thinking. They understood that their participation was essential to the success of our joint project; rather than students learning about anthropology, they had become respected members of a community of anthropologists.