I met him online. He texted me on Christmas. Two weeks later, we met in person at a Barnes & Noble.

This is the story of an internet connection that has nothing to do with romance. At 22, I was lost and living at home. I wasn’t looking for a date. I was trying to ace the SATs.

It was 2011 and I had recently dropped out of a Maryland rabbinical seminary and moved back into my parents’ house in Brooklyn. Although I was back in the community I grew up in, I felt different from everyone I knew. I was depressed and friendless. The internet provided solace and distraction, a community of fellow lonely people. I was particularly drawn to Reddit, which is essentially a mix of popular, crowdsourced links and conversations. The site has everything, from photos of the cutest kittens to long posts by NASA engineers about designing vehicles for the International Space Station.

One day I came across a post that caught my eye: “IAmA SAT/ACT tutor at the top end of the market in Manhattan. AMA.” AMA, in Reddit-speak, means “Ask Me Anything.” This generous citizen was answering questions in real-time about how he tutored the best and brightest of the Manhattan prep crowd. He framed the SAT not as a test of knowledge but of “college readiness,” and wrote about his strategies for, say, making “Beowulf” relatable to a high schooler. He charged almost 300 dollars an hour, but he got results: Some students added over 700 points to their exams. I was fascinated. Here was someone who held the logical keys to a foreign world I aspired to succeed in: college.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community going to a Yeshiva high school where we got three hours of secular studies each day. Most of our teachers were never formally trained and some were community members who were between jobs. After grade school, I went to seminary both for self-edification and because it was what was expected of me. It’s not that college was ever off-limits. I just had no idea how to get there.