This presentation looks at the experience of sexual orientation 'difference' in the higher education context and how such experience impacts on students' learning both negatively and positively. It takes as its point of departure the increasing queries being raised about how higher educationalists in the UK have come to work with notions of student learning in general. Some queries have been raised about the potential self-reproductive nature of phenomenographic research and the dependence on cognitive psychology methodologies in the more dominant canon of student learning literature (Haggis, 2009). Others are derived from concerns that the inter-subjective and subjective aspects of learning are missing or only discussed in passing (See Gunn, 2014; Gunn & McAllister, 2013). This paper aims to rebalance the debate by looking at what being LGBTQ might mean in terms of how such students engage with their disciplines. It will also attempt to reset the dominant discourse of ‘struggle’ in relation to LGBTQ students by focusing on how queer research is helping us to understand student agency in university learning contexts.