The title is a translation from a Spanish song, El Primer Día del Resto de mi Vida. Yes, for me, each day is the first day of the rest of my life. Don’t dwell in your past and lost yourself in daydreaming about the future. Hold each moment tightly and live it to the fullest.

When I was back in school, I dreaded studying English. It feels like a chore of memorizing a never-ending word list and staring wide-eyed at test papers requiring me to choose the correct answer from A, B, C and D, which was a task that seemed too difficult to undertake.

But after I left school and started working, I realized English is a critical skill to be mastered in order to excel not only in my job, but also for expanding mymindset. On the business side, mastering English enabled me to communicate directly with English-speaking customers and sell goods and services directly to them. On the spiritual side, there is an ocean of knowledge and literature written in another language besidesChinese. I can now read authentic English course books, novels, newspapers with the aid of a dictionary to look up some unknown words here and there.

My journey of learning English taught me that what enables one to learn a language is not talent, but interest and persistence. Interest is not enough, it can only draw you to one subject, but persistence is what keeps you working on it.

I still rememberhow I set goals about reading the full set of SherlockHomes novels in its original  text and the tremendous satisfaction I felt when that goal wasachieved.Whenever I encountered a new word, I will stop and look it up in a dictionary. By doing this, reading one word, one sentence one paragraph and one story after another, I finished reading the full set of SherlockHomes and dozens of other English novels. Not only did I improve my English, but also gained tremendoussatisfaction from reading those books. What a fun journey!

Each sentence I read, each new word I accumulated became one part of me and enabled me to learn more and study more.

In this society, besides English, another area that is growing exponentially is technology, especially information technology and computer science. I was interested in learning computers back in junior high school, but couldn’t afford to buy one until I was in college. My major in college was business English, not computer science that I wanted to study. Aftergraduating from college, I thought I would never get another chance of studying this subject. But luckily, I found beiwaionline, it opened a door for me to realize my goal to learn computers.

Now, people studying outside of school don’t have to take many exams assigned from school,  from exam, but challenges did exit. Take myself as an example, in the day, I have to work from 9AM to 5 PM, and after going home, I have to set time aside to play with my little kid and putting him to bed before I can take some time to do some studying. For me time is limited, I have to manage my time efficiently.

Information technology enables us to learn everywhere. With a smart phone, we can take books, videos and other learning materials along with us and study anywhere.

Time is scattered, one has to learn to harnessing time like a farmer harvesting wheat. Waiting for elevator to come, queuing in line for the bus and commuting to the workplace and back, all the scattered time can be utilized to learn.

So, even though a man working to support his family has limited time, he can’t complain that he has no time to study.

Studying can improve one’s skills and make him or her more competitive in the workplace. Studying can also improve one’s mind.

Now besides studying courses online, I also self-studied Spanish as a hobby.Computer science and information technology are so advanced today and they make learning a foreign language much easier than before. Tons of audio, video and text materials of one’s chosen language can be found online and dictionaries are more accessible than before. Back in my school days, I had to spend more than one minute sometimes to flip through a paper dictionary to look up a new word, but now, I only need to spend a few seconds  typing the new word out or point to the new word with a mouse, then voila, its definitions is shown. Not to mention other things, a dictionary with you enable one to master a language quicker than before.

Whether one is rich or poor, we human beings all have limited time on earth. Each one should treasure each moment and live it well and plan and work out a fantastic journey for oneself. I thank and appreciate BeiwaiOnline’s company on my journey.

弘成学苑苏州数字化学习中心  计算机科学与技术专业

李仰仲