In addition to not having breaks after 48, the big thing is the build up. The fast levels aren’t so bad for the first week or two. The problem is just the way it piles up over time and keeps piling up more and more.
It’s kind of crazy when I look back at my first post and see an apprentice count of only 167. My apprentice count nearly doubled between level 50 and 56, in the space of just three weeks. Admittedly, the later point was following an especially rough patch and my apprentice count has gone back down a bit since then (but still way higher than when I started).
The fast levels have roughly the same total number of items as the other levels. So if you go at maximum speed you only have 3.5 days to assimilate 100-150 new items instead of doing this in 7 days. Therefore you get more and more apprentice and guru items and so more daily reviews, too.
I have “met” @l_l at level 50 mid-November and I have just leveled up to 55 yesterday, so I am not going quite as fast as @l_l. Nevertheless the number of apprentice and guru items has significantly increased during the last weeks for me, too. Previously I tried to keep A+G below 1000 for most of the time, now I am constantly approaching the 1200 boundary (now 134 A and 1047 G, yet without doing any of the level 55 lessons). I currently have about 250 daily reviews.
Also, with the fifth week complete, the total time for this week was 736 minutes, or an average of only 105 minutes per day. This is mostly due to the anomalously low time on Tuesday - every other day was still pretty high, and in the second half of the week, I struggled quite a bit with leeches.
December 18:
Level: 59
Total time spent on Wanikani today: 106 minutes
Reviews in the last day: 422
Accuracy: 75.12% (317/422)
A completely unremarkable day today. Not much to talk about.
More seriously, now that I’m level 60, I still of course have tons of reviews to do, and still have some lessons to do. However, for the first time I’m taking it easy by not doing all the kanji lessons immediately after leveling up. Instead, I’ll spread them out over the next couple days. Therefore, you can already see a noticeable dip in today’s time due to not going through the massive kanji lesson wall I normally do on Saturdays and Wednesdays.
December 19:
Level: 60
Total time spent on Wanikani today: 135 minutes
Reviews in the last day: 551
Accuracy: 80.40% (443/551)
Absolutely amazing run ! Withstanding the fast levels at full speed is an accomplishment in itself, it’s really impressive, bravo ! Cake well-deserved.
Btw If you still have a tiny bit of energy left, I really recommend to try to clear your review every day and push through for just a little more. After reaching level 60 and stopping doing lesson I remember being surprised how fast the pressure dropped. After two weeks I was back to the one hour per day territory, and after a month or two it was less than 30 minutes and not a problem anymore.
I haven’t decided yet, but most likely I’ll just go until my current subscription ends (Jan 9th, IIRC) and not renew it. I don’t see much point in continuing to pay just to burn the last few (well ok, more like six thousand) items.
i have the same feelings towards the burning process, but i subscribed for lifetime, so there’s no excuse for me, I’ll probably just keep going until there are no longer any items in apprentice and give up entirely
even that is going to take until mid-february at earliest though
there’s still a few useful words at level 48 i’m at right now, I learned 理不尽 and 無闇に today, both of which i consider to be somewhat useful to get accustomed with.
41 days left until the cake for me xd
i’ll make a countdown thread around new year’s
I had a pretty grueling 47 minutes of reviews this morning. On the bright side, at least I didn’t have half an hour of new kanji lessons on top of that like I had every previous Wednesday morning. I did unlock the final kanji lesson this morning, so three more days until I unlock the final vocab lesson.
December 23:
Level: 60
Total time spent on Wanikani today: 117 minutes
Reviews in the last day: 505
Accuracy: 72.48% (366/505)
I thought review loads would quickly go down after hitting level 60 and slowing the pace of lessons a bit, but for some reason, my Apprentice count has actually been rising for the last several days. Presumably, I’m just failing badly at the reviews. Lately I’ve been failing too many reviews and they’ve piled up a bit. My Apprentice count creeped up to 311 today, though it’s since gone back down to “only” 294
December 24:
Level: 60
Total time spent on Wanikani today: 99 minutes
Reviews in the last day: 441
Accuracy: 73.92% (326/441)
I’m not sure, but I thought even if you cancel your subscription you can still burn everything? I don’t know. But after the free 3 levels run out and you don’t continue to pay, you can continue reviewing those items with the SRS, it just won’t unlock the level 4 lessons for you. I thought that at level 60 if you stop paying, you can keep reviewing just like that (seeing as there is no level 61)? Is what I thought, anyway.
My understanding is that you can’t do reviews or lessons for any level 4+ items if you aren’t subscribed. I guess I could still try to burn anything from levels 1-3 that isn’t already burned.