Students are encouraged to work with their peers more than ever as physics and engineering instructors come to appreciate that collaboration can support student learning. However, many factors within and outside these collaborative spaces influence students' decisions to collaborate or to seek help in other ways, like accessing online homework solutions. To investigate how students navigate these decisions and why, we interviewed and collected audio recordings of autoethnographic reflections from undergraduate engineering students taking physics courses. We present a preliminary analysis of "Ashley's" decision making. She is an Engineering and Music double major who splits her time between coursework, band practice, and social events on campus. She tends to avoid collaboration outside of class, and she is an unapologetic user of Chegg, a paid online service that provides solutions to problems that students submit. We explore how various factors such as cultural narratives, disciplinary identity, and individual personality traits combine to push Ashley toward favoring Chegg over peer collaboration when seeking help with her engineering coursework. This line of research can inform instructional interventions aimed at supporting collaboration and discouraging unproductive solutions-use.