A significant body of literacy and language research over the last two decades has been informed by a sociocultural perspective and an associated qualitative design, which are often seen as valuable and appropriate for researching literacy. As an emergent researcher, whose understanding of language education was mostly informed by individualistic psychology and linguistics, I encountered a significant challenge in designing a project for my Masters research undertaken in Australia in which I aimed at examining international students' technology use in English as a second language (ESL) and their challenges. Researching the experiences with technology, which might be so unique and personal, required a major shift in the way I viewed the world and thought about literacy and technology. Informed by autoethnography, this paper is written in a form of a narrative in which I draw on my educational and teaching experiences in the USSR and, after its collapse, in the newly independent country Belarus, to explore the origins of my early positivist views on language teaching and technology use. I discuss how these understandings have been challenged and changed through a major epistemological shift during my Masters research and how this shift has influenced the research methodology of my current doctoral study. Some reflections about the value of autoethnography to explore research experiences are discussed. Finally, I argue that such reflective practice may help emerging scholars to understand who they are, how they are positioned and what their goals as researchers are.