I did it. I DID IT.
Wanikani was something that I wanted to start since I was 13 or 14. I knew I was interested in Japan from around then and while I wasn’t quite sure on careers yet, I had a feeling it’d stick with me. But this isn’t exactly a happy story of me being able to go after what I wanted from a young age.
I was raised Mormon. I could tell there was something wrong with it growing up, but with the way my parents always watched our computer history, phone tabs, used tracking apps… Let’s just say I didn’t quite get the childhood I would’ve liked. I would have been OVERJOYED to have started Wanikani as a teenager. But life doesn’t always turn out the way we hope it will. In fact, I’m enough of an idiot that even when I did manage to sneakily buy a $250 prepaid card under my parents’ noses, I stupidly spent it on another language aid that didn’t do shit for me when I could’ve just waited for Christmas to roll around and used it on a Wanikani lifetime sub. Sigh.
While it took awhile for my parents to accept my resignation from the cult once I finally was old enough to do so, freeing myself from it opened a door that I hadn’t had before: I could actually set my sights on Japanese. As much as they’d like to try to gaslight me about it, my parents created an environment where un-“American” things were shunned, likely because Mormonism itself likes to hitch onto America whenever it can. Whenever I thought about pursuing Japanese before, I knew I’d be ridiculed and shunned, even disowned by them, and unshackling myself from the cult finally gave me the opportunity to chase what I’d wanted to for so long.
I do wish I’d tried shit earlier. Even if I didn’t do all this at 13/14, going to a community college that actually had Japanese classes would’ve made a nice difference for me and I could’ve already graduated by now. But I am getting an opportunity to study abroad in Japan from waiting this long, one that probably would’ve had the door slammed on it if everything happened a couple years earlier (thanks Covid). As much as I dread the wasted time, maybe it was meant to be.
This summer is the first I’ve had off school since 2020. I’ve been enrolled in classes since then, doing an intensive second-year course crammed into one summer last year and finishing my third this past spring. School and work may have made me slack a little (a lot) on vocab sometimes, and I’ve formed a bit of a mountain, but the past couple weeks I’ve been kicking its ass and setting a great pace. I hope to put all these lessons into the review queue by the time I finish level 60 and burn everything into my brain from there. With as much time as I “wasted” in shit environments that weren’t conducive to studying and where I was just trying to survive, I’m glad I was able to attack Wanikani this hard once I did finally get the chance, and completed it in a year. I’ll attach my chart below.
Through all the ups and downs, thank you all for being there! I’m not an active forum user at all, but I lurked from time to time and enjoyed what I saw in here and the help/insight I was able to receive. Thank you!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some lessons to attend to.
