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The article offers a reflection stemming from the elaboration of a doctoral research project, which involves the students enrolled in the first year of the Integrated Technical Secondary Education, at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Mato Grosso (IFMT). Aiming to illustrate the main research study, we present a section of a qualitative pilot study carried out in the mathematics subject. The broader study involves students at risk of failure in mathematics and seeks to bring the students’ voice into the discussion of their failure in the discipline. The main purpose of the study is to understand how first-year students experience situations of failure and difficulty in mathematics that put them at risk of dropout and/or retention. It is expected to contribute to the improvement of mathematics learning, to a better understanding of students’ evasion and retention, and to the design of policies and actions that may improve the quality of technical education and promote its democratization.