Learning is a process that involves mutual responsibility and practice adjustments. By mutual responsibility, we mean students' relying on their instructors and classmates for feedback as they proactively navigate new material. By practice adjustments, we mean changes in a student's approach to a course based on monitoring and evaluating their progress in the course. However, in introductory physics, many students struggle to adjust their practices in response to challenges encountered in the learning process. We studied these difficulties in an introductory studio physics course by assigning a weekly reflection journal with questions about the students' experience in the course, including the challenges they encountered and the study habits they practiced. These reflection assignments prompted the students to describe the roles fulfilled (or unfulfilled) by members of the course community, to identify practice adjustments (or lack thereof), and to self-assess their progress toward positive learning outcomes. We reviewed these students' final reflection assignment and recorded themes that emerged: These students talked about collaboration (interacting with a classmate in the learning process), course difficulty (degrees or progression of difficulty), responsibility (Who is responsible for the student's learning?), self-managed growth (the learner making adjustments or taking actions to maintain or assert agency over their learning), and a lack of change in their practices, capabilities, or success. These insights into the student learning experience will be used to further classify student responses and generate course improvements.