First ‘WaniKani Sigh’

When I was doing KW (years ago) I preferred to have it set to only show me burned WK items. Lessens the workload too

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Personally, I don’t mind interfering with SRS. If I feel the need to reinforce an item, I do it.
Anyway, my first “WaniKani Sigh” moment was around autumn of 2016 when I was about my current level (I’ve done two resets since then), which lead to the first big delay. I managed to recover from that delay and reached level 36 when it started again. The reviews kept piling up, I tried to tackle them but was doing too little and too slowly… During one of those attempts I’ve actually reached level 37, but then I just stopped doing them and tried to force myself to deal with them for most of 2017… Then I did a reset to level 1 and started again, but stumbled at level 20, so I spent half a year trying to force myself to resume studying and then did another reset to level 1…
Last autumn it happened again - stumbled at level 22, waited for half a year… But this time I decided not to do a reset and managed to tackle my pile of reviews and as you can see, I’m now level 27…

The point is, such moments will keep happening; the important thing is not to let them stop you from studying and not to allow your reviews to pile up too much :sweat_smile:
That was my mistake which I repeated several times. But I’ve recovered and hope not to repeat it again :sweat_smile:
Anyway, best of luck with your studies!

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I just had such a moment, but I don’t know if it’s related to WK really or just myself not concentrating enough - when typos add up, stupid synonyms are required when in fact I understood what was going on etc. etc.

Sometimes I wish I could go through my reviews orally - no typos and speaking pronunciation in one, yay!! :smiley:

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Generally I never have this with new Kanji and vocab, since seeing it for the first time is always fun for me, but reviews can feel like that. Particularly when it’s Gurued plus stuff that is old and super uninteresting since you feel that you know all of this. I think I’ve learned that it helps when I do those on my laptop since it let’s me go through it faster than in my phone

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My biggest frustration is that I feel like I consistently make stupid mistakes in the first 5 or so items of any review session. Like my brain isn’t in Japanese mode yet.

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I get what you mean, sometimes your brain just needs a bit of a warm-up. If you have anki you can use that before going into WK? Or you could just search for a random Japanese article :wink:

To me this is a question of having clear objectives in mind. Like why you’re learning the language to begin with. If you have something to look forward to it’s easier to stay motivated.

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I know exactly what you mean. I used to get reviews wrong, too, only because I typed one letter wrong and thus slowed down my progress. Very frustrating. Try using the Double Check Userscript. It let’s you retype answers and even has some other useful options, as well.

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Ok this was hugely helpful thank you… I was getting quizzed on all my Guru’d words and it was way too much. I’ve switched it now just to master and above!

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I can’t remember well but it was probably on the early levels like lvl 5. And it’s been like that since then. I only get excited about a level when it has a kanji that I really wanted to learn for a while, but there are levels with boring kanji that makes me sigh

I’ve never felt it. Started in late August last year and keep grinding it out and blown away being able to read nhk jp site a little. I’d have never thought that getting restructured as a corporate commercial lawyer at 45, I’d be well along to reading Japanese. But I am. And if you feel like this, maybe try something else.

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When I was busy for several days and returned to 300+ reviews. Took several days to clear them.

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I don’t remember exactly when it happened for the first time, but it typically happens in the afternoons, especially when I have lots of reviews piled up and I killed my mind on other stuff and am not feeling up to anything. I have a policy of always doing all reviews before going to bed so at least I don’t defer them more than a couple hours.

It also sometimes happens when I just start missing lots of reviews for no reason.

I’m having a fairly large sigh right now. The last few levels have taken me ages to do, and I just haven’t started on level 41, though I have been working on the reviews that keep coming in. Supposedly, I’m about to start getting fast levels, and I don’t really feel like putting in a lot of effort right now, just kinda maintaining my review count. I suppose maybe if I keep relaxing like this, it’ll eventually pass and I can face the last third of the program with guns blazing. Other than that, I don’t really have any ideas how to get past these sighs.

Nothing is forcing you to do the fast levels at double speed. It’s ok to keep going at the same pace you were before.

I’ve had waves of motivation with WK and Japanese in general. I reset a couple years ago from level 40-something (which looking back I kind of regret), and still haven’t made it back to where I was. So that in combination of less free time due to other commitments made it more difficult to get back into the swing of things, especially as I had hundreds of reviews each in WK, KW, and Anki.

But I’ve found that more exposure to native materials has helped a lot, as well as having concrete goals/time limits. In the past this was taking JLPT, and now I’m studying in preparation for studying abroad in Japan. Going from “I want to know Japanese” to “I want to pass the N3”, I want to understand the basic plot of X TV show", “I want to be able to talk about X topic with friends”, “I want to read X book with the book club”, etc. has been helpful to my motivation.

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Thank you for the remark, seems like a good option. I’m a bit in doubt though if I should do it because right now using the reorder script already messes with me a lot :smiley:

Personally, I don’t use the reorder script, since I don’t want to have any vocab lessons leftover before starting a new level. But I wouldn’t worry about that - once installed, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to (now you just have the option of retyping every answer). It’s still a bit customizible, but those options don’t have to concern you. In every lvl 60 post I’ve read so far, they praise this script and I can imagine that if you mess up a burned review because you typed “i” instead of “u”, that’s really gonna suck. But regardless, it’s your decision.

Thanks for all the insight everyone! I think the biggest issue was my KaniWani was set up to quiz me right at guru and that was causing all my stress. I’ve since adjusted it and I am back to enjoying this grind. Keep kicking butt friends!

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