<p>The process of apprenticeship offers beginners and new entrants into a socio-occupational community the opportunity to gain proficiency and hands-on experience under expert guidance. Anthropologists seeking extensive insights and closer interaction with skilled communities have used apprenticeship as a research method to gain deep immersion and embodied learning. Through an autoethnographic lens and drawing on anthropological fieldwork which utilized the apprenticeship research method to study youths who are part of the Igbo apprenticeship system in Onitsha market, southeast Nigeria, this paper explores the intricacies of power, positionality, and epistemology in the ethnographic research encounter. The premise of this paper is that in the ethnographer’s quest to achieve closeness, they are often mired in a methodological dilemma that exposes the power disparities between the researcher and <i>the researched</i>. In this case, where the researcher assumed the position of an apprentice in pursuit of embodiment, it became quickly evident that the complexity of their social position significantly influenced their research experiences and outcome – a reality that all anthropologists must contend with, whether insider or outsider.</p>