As part of a project studying student experiences in quantum mechanics (QM), we collected two streams of data. We asked students to generate autobiographical video, audio, and written blogs and participate in open-format interviews while taking the first semester of an upper-division QM course. We also interviewed former students about their experiences in QM. In asking students to generate data on their own, we intended for students to have the freedom to generate their own critiques and appraisals of the class content and culture, including how it interacts with their experiences learning physics in other classes and their experiences outside of physics. While exploring preliminary themes, we present one student's experiences as informed by her use of "outside resources" (online solutions and examples, a class group-chat, and out-of-class study groups). We discuss research and instructional implications, specifically, how interactions with outside resources may be gendered and affect her emotions, moral stances, epistemology, and physics self-efficacy.