Today, I burned my first items (some level 1 radicals), at level 19.
I got an email back when I got to level 10 that said:
" Level 10 is about where things begin to even out. As in, you should be burning items and getting them out of your review queue. If you aren’t, you will soon. Everything. Will. Be. Okay."
Looking at that link, it makes sense to me that radicals that I unlocked Feb 11 would become burned August 3 if I get them right every time:
guru 1 in 3.5 days so february 14
master in 3 weeks so march 7
enlightened in 1 month so april 4
burned in 4 months, so august 3
So is it that I’m expected to only be level 10 in 6 months and I’m leveling that much faster than normal? Or did this change at some point and the email didn’t change?
What level were you when you burned your first radical?
I’m excited (and nervous - do I really know these radicals? )
The 4 months between when I last saw the radical and now are pretty similar to having it be burned though. I mean there’s a psychological difference between “I will never be shown this again” and “I will see this in 4 months”, but in practice, they are pretty darned similar.
I was also around level 20 when I had my first burns. I do think the devs were anticipating users going slower when they wrote that email. There was a change at some point in the past to speed up level 1 and 2 but it won’t account for a 10 level difference from the devs expectations.
Apparently I was level 18, just about to turn 19, when it happened. And that was after I was doing very little in March due to burnout. I probably could have been 21-23 if it weren’t for that.
However I was leveling very fast because I was doing reviews round the clock and I was picking lessons to get my radicals and kanji to Guru asap. My retention was also extremely high because of coming in with previous knowledge.
Some people level a lot slower, it’ll vary based on which lessons are done when, and based on retention.
I wouldn’t worry about whether you’re going faster than expected or faster than average. If it’s a load you can handle, and your retention appears to be good, it’s fine. I would say, given your level, make sure it’s not cutting into your grammar study, and native material reading time - which I do hope you have started to do.
(Also I wouldn’t worry about how well you retain radicals. Radicals are training wheels for kanji, but you want to get to a point where you recognize kanji without them, so it doesn’t really matter too much if you don’t know them super amazingly well).
Yeah I’m not actually worried about it - the radicals, particularly those early ones don’t seem that important. Like I couldn’t for the life of me remember the ‘stick’ as the term for the downward line radical. Later checked and it’s because I haven’t really seen it since level 3 (well it was part of 存 technically but I didn’t notice it there)
I do think that maybe the devs should edit that email so as not to give people the expectation that they should be burning at level 10 or they may be doing it wrong.
I am also doing the reviews around the clock. Started out limiting to 25 a day, but then had to go down to 20 to stay sane
my first go-round i was pretty consistently spending 11 days per level (other than the first three which i think took that long total)
just did some quick math and it seems i was also level 19 or around there when i first started burning things
i remember reading that email and then i just kept leveling without those items coming back and i wondered why
this time, i decided to slow down, so i was only level 14
)