In 2007, I embarked on a PhD study to explore diverse students' experiences, representations and understandings of personal development and personal development planning at one British university. The timing of this project was critical because universities were charged with a responsibility to provide opportunities for students to engage with personal development planning by the beginning of the academic year 2005-2006. I was interested to see how a broad, national initiative could be translated into individual student experiences and what difference (if any) it could make to their lives. At the outset of my research, I settled on qualitative methodology using a grounded theory approach to interview data analysis. However, working through my analysis, I soon realised that even though I learned the process and was able to provide (at least partial) explanations of the phenomenon, I was not fully satisfied with the outcomes. I therefore explored other methods of qualitative analysis and decided to use a narrative approach to add a further analytical lens. This case study provides an example of applying a narrative framework, voice-centred relational method, to the data that was not collected with narrative in mind, and discusses the challenges and advantages of it. [This content is provided in the format of an e-book.]