Gave me a podium to be a language pioneer for a little while. I gather I am still revered in some circles as the first fluent speaker. 🙂
Gave me a severe sequence of intellectual challenges at a time when I needed it; helped me sharpen several of my skills, including writing in English. 🙂
Made me a linguist and not just a linguaphile. The emphasis of Lojban on formal semantics (not just formal logic) made me more acutely aware of language structure, and drove me to study it formally—even if what I ended up studying was rather fluffier (a common outcome for those who come to Linguistics from Computer Science).