Concept-based curricula continue to gain traction in higher-education and nursing as professional content and knowledge broadens in its scope and demand. To facilitate students’ experience as they form into professionals, nurse educators at a large research-intensive Canadian university have implemented a student-centered concept-based curriculum (CBC). The aim of this hermeneutic-phenomenology study, informed by Wenger’s Social Theory of Learning (1998), was to understand the learners’ formative process as they experienced learning the nursing profession within this context. Eight undergraduate nursing students, who were in the first term of their fourth-or final year of the program, were purposefully recruited to participate in two in-depth conversational interviews. Phenomenological reflective analysis (van Manen, 2014) guided the writing process and was used to make interpretive sense of the data. The findings show the research phenomenon, learning the nursing profession (in a CBC), is a process of persevering through and navigating forward from ‘the highest of highs to lowest of lows’ as the learner encounters being evaluated, ‘the-cohort-thing’, educational choice, the presentation of nursing, and experience of nursing. Three lenses are introduced that could be used to analyze the phenomenon and the impact it is having on the nurse learner. This thesis focuses on the first lens, How to Live as a Student Nurse, where the environment and participants’ reactions and responses are explored. The major finding was seeing the impact that pedagogical care can have on the nurse learner’s experience as they progress forward. Participants described pedagogical care as the facilitator being personable, approachable, and oriented towards the learner. This study emphasizes the need to value communities of care within research-intensive higher-education institutions to support the formation of Registered Nurses.