In this article I will present a range of experiences of graduate socialisation that have been discussed in past articles in the journal "Anthropology Matters". These are the experiences of social anthropology Ph.D. students in the United Kingdom. The overarching theme for the article is "regulating emotions", and the excerpts presented illustrate how Ph.D. students experience and deal with different emotional states that they encounter during the pre-fieldwork, fieldwork and writing up stages. I argue that the way in which these emotional states are handled may be just as important, in terms of gaining a Ph.D., as the increase in knowledge that is the ostensible marker of a completed Ph.D. (Contains 2 notes.)