The paper reports on a study done with teacher students who were participants and partners. The purpose of the inquiry is to seek understanding of the personal aspect of the teacher competence the students construct during their studies. Teacher competence is defined from a holistic view and refers to what teachers are - or should be - able to do in their work; however, teacher competence is assumed to be both professional, based on reflections and knowledge about teaching and learning, and personal, involving self-belief and personal interests and values. A conceptual framework is presented, depicting aspects and dimensions in the competence aimed at in teacher education. Four aspects are defined: a) doing, b) knowing, c) being, and d) reflecting. In this inquiry special focus is on the aspect of being, and on how this personal aspect (being) is connected to other aspects of teacher' professional competence, doing, knowing, and reflecting.Participants in the study were approximately 100 teacher students, at Iceland University of Education, that started their study in the division for primary and lower secondary school teachers, residence programs, in the autumn 2001, and most of them graduated in the spring 2004. Ten students from the participant group were co-workers, helped for instance with developing questionnaires, classifying answers and interpretation of findings. The data consists of a) answers to questions about difficult teacher tasks, b) answers to questionnaires (Nov. 2002 and Nov. 2003), focusing on difficult teacher tasks and the support from the teacher education program, c) interviwes with five students from the group and d) narratives written by seven students' at the end of their studies, describing changes in competence and opinions during their studies. The findings indicate that personal strength is the essence of the competence the teacher students are striving for during their years of studies. The struggle with own person is dominant; self-confidence and self knowledge seem to be crucial factors for mastering the most important tasks of teachers; personal experiences in pre-service periods have great influences on interest in "knowing", and the content of the students' reflections is personal more than theoretical. Two questions are used for shedding light on the context of the teacher students' experiences: How does teacher education support the students in constructing their teacher competence? How are these findings connected to the characteristics of modern societies? Perhaps the importance of personal strength has become more central for modern teachers than it was some decades ago.