Senior upper secondary schools are an important part of the Finnish adult education system. There are 55 such schools in Finland, generating 8% (2003) of Finnish matriculation examinations (i.e. a national exam taken in at least four subjects in all Finnish upper secondary schools simultaneously). These schools are distributed across different parts of the country and are therefore an important resource for offering schooling opportunities for adults. Besides upper secondary school study, they offer multifaceted opportunities: comprehensive school courses, distance learning, subject studies, courses for special needs, and double certificates (i.e. an upper secondary school certificate together with a vocational certificate), to name but a few, and thus being in an important position in developing educational practices in Finland. For students the schooling is free of charge, except for the subject studies, and the entrance is not limited for those of age. My ongoing PhD investigation examines the life histories of students in one senior upper secondary school in the Finnish metropolitan area in order to analyse the meanings they attach to such study as part of their life course. So far 13 students aged between 23 and 66 have participated in the investigation. The research data consist of life- lines, written narratives on senior upper secondary school experiences, and narrative life history interviews-the latter forming the basic research material. I apply Linde's (1993) definition of a life story in the interview data. She describes it as "a temporally discontinuous unit told over many occasions and altered to fit the specific occasions of speaking, as well as specific addressees and to reflect changes in the speaker's long-term situation, values, understanding, and (consequently) discursive practices". School is anything but the same for everybody and in my presentation I will discuss some initial considerations of how the students construct themselves as learners or, alternatively, as non-learners when narrating their life histories, and particularly their senior upper secondary school experiences. I am equally interested in formal, informal, and non-formal learning experiences, as I see life as a continuous overall learning process. As a tool for analysis I use Labov 's (Labov & Waletzky 1997, Labov 1972, 1997, Vilkko 1997, Riessman 1993, Linde 1993) model for analyzing personal narratives. I will consider the meanings constructed - being interested in both the narrative contents and how these contents are made meaningful by individual speakers - in the current Finnish and international educational policy context. I will argue that school maintains the differential assessment criteria characteristic of the school's conception of ability (cf. Kasanen 2003) through its practices that enhance competition and take intelligence as an innate characteristic that cannot be altered. This institutional model of intelligence is in turn converted into the students' interpretations of their own and their fellow students' ability.