This autoethnography provides a description and thematic illustration of the student experience of a community-based research (CBR) course and partnership. Through evaluating personal experiences with CBR, the author identified three qualities of meaningful CBR experiences: trust, indeterminacy, and emotion. These qualities are explored, and comparisons are made between the outcomes experienced and those established in the literature of student learning in CBR. These findings enrich discourse of student experiences in CBR and corroborate literature on student learning in CBR through illuminating the experience by which that learning occurs.