How has the internet helped me as a self-taught learner（Pt.2） Pt 1:https://www.italki.com/notebook/3420414/entry/720703 However, unforeseen by any of us, I left school yet again not long after. But this time the reason's that my eyes has suddenly developed a dysfunction which makes me unable to read for more than some minutes. This blow striked me hard, because at this point, the 'high school - university - a job to make a living' seems to be the one and only pathway, every single person I've known are following that path. All of a sudden I'm officially an outlier, floating helplessly on uncharted water. After some tough time adjusting, I started looking for other means to get knowledge, via listening. English turned out to be a 'life saver' which I didn't expect when I read those English books to myself as a kid. And of course, the Internet was vital. There were hardly any listening educational resources in Chinese at the time, however English opened the enlightening gate of Open Courses for me. I worked my way through many open courses (of UC Berkeley, Open Yale Courses etc.), especially those of psychology (and other social sciences) and philosophy. At the beginning this preference was only because these are the only subjects which primarily involve ideas that I can work inside my head, instead of using my eyes. However, gradually, I got attuned to them and they start to make sense with clarity. Apart from these heavy-duty study, I also learnt a lot from audiobooks and podcasts. I was addicted to Stephen Fry's voice for quite a while and marvelled at how he can portray all the characters in Harry Potter, sometimes even more vivid than the movie actors. In the mean time, I obtained a degree in English from the National Self-taught Higher Education Program. Looking back, I was lucky that my eyes got bad AFTER I've already got the basic tool of English under my belt, and I happen to live in a time where there's internet and the endeavor of open courses to equalize the opportunity for education. (There's a part 3 following this, surprisingly...)

How has the internet reshaped my life-path as a self-taught learner（Pt.1） (Please note that I've mostly just learnt English one-way, don't really have the opportunity to hear feedback, so I think my English tends to be over grandiose or inappropriate, y'know, second language learner often put as much big words as possible into their practicing. Please correct me with that!) As someone who has joined italki only recently, I'm still figuring out how things work here. I was born and bred in China and have learnt English as my second language. To be honest, initially I felt as if I should ONLY present myself as a professional name-card sort of figure. Until recently my language-partner inspired me to try sharing some personal story of learning, which is somewhat unusual. Through my life up to this point, the total time I was studying in school was no more than 6 years. This started off as an intentional choice in my 3rd grade, my parents wanted me to learn broader knowledge than the school's curriculum. This appeared to be quite 'crazy' to parents of my peers. Like the other working-class Chinese parents of their age, they didn't have access to good higher education nor can they speak English, yet they recognized the importance of English very early on so they decided to give me as much exposure of it as possible. A more exact word than 'homeschool' is 'selfschool', because for the most part, they just left me with a bunch of study materials, working my way through the learning process. I designed from scratch my own learning approach which follows a tempo that suits me. I would attend the school's final exams and got top grades. English was among the main things I learnt along those years. Another main focus was on violin-practicing, naturally that requires professional instruction and vigorous practicing, and so I did, for 8 years. We decided to return to normal educational system for senior highschool, since it's more demanding, college entrance was at stake at this point (schoolwork gets really overwhelming in Chinese high schools). However, unforeseen by any of us, I left school yet again not long after. But this time the reason's that my eyes has suddenly developed a dysfunction which makes me unable to read for more than some minutes. This blow striked me hard, because at this point, the 'high school - university - a job to make a living' seems to be the one and only pathway, every single person I've known are following that path. All of a sudden I'm officially an outlier, floating helplessly on uncharted water. …………