The study aimed to identify the main hardships and challenges encountered by teaching interns and the ways in which they cope with these difficulties, as they emerged from personal diaries that the interns kept in the first year of teaching. Findings from the diaries identified the following main categories of hardship on entering the profession: 1) difficulties in the personal dimension, including difficulties involved in navigating between private and professional lives; 2) difficulties in the personal-professional dimension relating to the transition from the status of student to the status of internship; 3) difficulties in the inter-personal dimension including communication with colleagues and parents and a sense of isolation; 4) difficulties in the professional dimension including coping with the complexity of teaching, handling a class and burdensome workloads. The findings also relate to coping strategies employed by the interns to cope with these difficulties. Early pre-service teaching including exposure to the difficulties involved in teaching may facilitate initial work experiences, lessen the shock of the first plunge into the classroom and reduce the phenomenon of early dropout from the profession.