In this chapter I will explore the successive accounts of Sherleen, a young woman of African Caribbean heritage living in inner-city London. Sherleen was interviewed four times between the ages of 13 and 16 by Sue Sharpe, who conducted each of the interviews in a room at Sherleen's school. I approach this material as a secondary analyst and have spent time absorbed with audio tapes and interview transcripts, looking for ways in which to tell the series of linked narratives that are within this body of data. A fifth interview was undertaken with Sherleen in 2002, after the first draft of this chapter was written, and in keeping with the temporal structure of this book, it is considered in Chapter Eight. The detail of the data set is outlined in the Appendix (see p 181).

The changes that take place in Sherleen's life over this period may appear modest. She continued at school, working hard, being entered early for one of her GCSEs and doing well in her mock exams. She continued to live with her mother in a flat, spending most of her time with her extended family and occasionally seeing her father and half-brother. Her social activities developed and contracted as school work claimed more of her time and attention. Two boyfriends came and went, and her mother split up from her long-term partner. Yet this was also a period of intense identity work for Sherleen through which she explored the kind of person she wanted to be and negotiated her relationships with others.

The reader will not find a singular chronological story in this chapter, but rather a series of partial narratives, each of which captures a ‘field’ of Sherleen's ‘existence’ (education, family and leisure). These fields, which represent the spaces through which Sherleen's project of self is constructed, give rise to the narrative threads of a wider biography. As the partial narratives unfold the reader may feel caught within, in a temporal loop – moving repeatedly through the same four-year cycle – but this incremental approach allows for an accumulation of complexity, meaning and insight.

Education: from diligence to determination

We begin Sherleen's story with school, the place where she spends a large part of most of her days, the demands of which also structure much of her ‘free time’. All four of Sherleen's interviews were marked by an educational temporality.