Personally I like not being able to use my brain properly so I sit between 60 and 160 apprentice items, depending on how long ago I leveled up. I’ve never felt more mentally exhausted for a longer period of time. I struggle to hold conversations in English after blitzing through 100 reviews.
60 - 80 is good if you don’t want to burn yourself out, or like being able to function.
160 if you’re fuckin nuts and have stuff you don’t want to think about, like the essay I’m supposed to be writing right now.
But my next batch of reviews are only 8 minutes away…
I know exactly what you mean. After an hour of reviews I just start talking in random Japanese. The thing is, it’s not sentences. Just random vocab. The equivalent of going like, “dog, to run gold, police box.” It’s like my brain has melted.
I’ve found that the more Japanese I do, the more my English suffers. I start pronouncing words with Japanese pronunciation and sentences take on Japanese grammar style.
Ha! I wish it worked out that way for me, with my current grammatical understanding, my normal attempts at Japanese conversation end similarly. I just end up unable to think of a response to simple questions, or so unable to concentrate that I can’t process English words lol.
Ah well, I can’t help but marvel at how much Kanji I can recognise after only completing 33% of WaniKani.
Well I am fucking nuts and there’s always responsibilities I’d rather not think about so I just might be heading up to 160 apprentice items. Maybe I’ll go for a record. 200? 300? How wild can this party get…
Leveled up, but managed to get my lessons down to 310. Cleared out all of my vocab up to level 23 (I am level 28 as of this writing). Did about half and half clearing out lessons in level order, and taking on random lessons. Currently I have 146 Apprentice items. Been clearing lessons as they come in with a pretty high success rate. Think I might continue to do lessons tomorrow? I’m not sure I’ve hit my breaking point in terms of review load, but I’m anxious to clear out these vocab lessons.
I find that the reorder script helps if you want to level up fast but not doing the vocab lessons soon enough is bad that it doesn’t strengthen the onyomi reading/kunyomi reading for the kanji you just learned.
My advice would be to prioritize kanji and radicals but make sure to do vocab for that same level soon after. Just get into the habit and it will soon come off as second nature! Ganbatte kudasai!
Completed 41 vocab lessons today. Down to 247 lessons. Cleared out all vocab lessons up to level 25. Currently at 172 Apprentice items. The reviews are starting to be notably large and consistent, although I’m not having trouble keeping up because much of the vocab is very obvious based on the kanji. Still getting fairly high review %correct. Tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday I have to work a lot more, and I’m throwing a graduation party on Saturday, so we will see how well I keep up with pushing these reviews and lessons over the weekend. But if I keep this pace up, I’ll be out of my hole in about a week, which is promising!
Stopped updating daily, but I haven’t given up! Slowed down a lot last weekend with working, throwing a graduation party, and cleaning up my house afterwards spoiler[/spoiler]. Been keeping at it all week and I’m down to 150 lessons. 60 of the remaining lessons are from my current level (28), 11 from level 26, and 79 from level 27. By the end of the weekend, I should be all caught up and begin the leveling process again as a proper WaniKanian. Also, I currently have 155 Apprentice items. I never hit 200, thankfully. I’m not even the best at memorizing stuff, but a lot of the vocab is fairly obvious if you know the kanji and some grammar. Hopefully next time I update this thread, I will be out of my hole.
as a walking talking cautionary tale, i thought i would stop by.
just about 10 min ago, i FINALLY got my apprentice level kanji to below 1000. yes, thats not an extra 0 (i believe at the worst it was almost 1200). through a combination of naughtily abusing the review re-orderer, an obsession with constantly emptying my lessons queue first before anything else, not reading the advice in the forums, and life-related nonsense that kept me away from wanikani for weeks on end, i managed to create a fujisan sized monster that i have to stubbornly chip away at with a spoon a little everyday.
i feel like i should be the wanikani equivalent of those “scared straight” prison dudes. dont be flippin’ stupid. study smart. or i’ll shiv you with my kanji spoon.
Wow 1200 apprentice? That is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. Someone gave me some really good advice earlier, and I think I should share it with you. I imagine your review queue is out of control. If you’re not doing it already, you could probably use xMunch’s Ultimate Reorder script to reorder your reviews so that you are doing them in level order, thus artificially creating the experience of leveling up again, and not just randomly doing reviews. Anyways, I’m sure you can dig yourself out of WK debt, just like I’m doing! It just takes time and a plan.
I cleared out all my lessons except for my current Level 28 lessons! I’m sitting at 160 apprentice items, so it will still be a day or so before I can comfortably finish my level 28 lessons and start leveling up again. But I cleared out ~350 old vocab lessons in just over 2 weeks!
Finally free and back to normal wanikani life. Thank you to everybody who supported me and good luck to anyone who reads this in the future and may be in a similar situation.
Congratulations on getting out of it! Just read your account of doing so in the OP, great work!
: D
Just remember to keep cycling them in now, whether you decide to do interleaving with all your other lessons, or leaving them to the end of the level. Just make sure you do them!
