Doing science in the laboratory entails many skills and competencies central to higher science education, such as problem-solving and critical thinking. Its affective and motivational character has also been shown to instigate and stabilize disciplinary engagement and identity formation. During their engagement in the process of co-construction, communication, and evaluation of scientific knowledge, non-cognitive aspects such as motivation, emotion, and volition play a crucial role. This study examines how some of those aspects unfold, through the lens of “epistemic conation”, which refers to motivational and volitional aspects associated with epistemic practice. By observing students and analyzing focus group interviews and multimodal discourse derived from their interactions in a laboratory of pharmaceutical analytical chemistry, our study shows how students’ engagement in scientific practices requires not only cognitive skills but also affective and conative engagement. The article presents a taxonomy of epistemic conation in the laboratory, including grit, motivational factors, goal orientation, and volitional and regulatory strategies. The findings suggest that conation is a crucial aspect of learning in the laboratory, which has implications for curriculum development, instruction, and assessment in higher science education. It is argued that science education research should move beyond a focus on individual perseverance to include the social and epistemic dimensions of doing science, which is essential for understanding student learning and experiences in the laboratory.