I’m already past Level 12 in WaniKani but I don’t feel happy at all. It took my five months to get to my current level with ons and offs. I actually want to go back since I realized that I don’t really remember anything above level 5. This has gotten me down the past couple of days and have been thinking to restart my WK level but I was also getting sentimental on the pains of how I gotten to this level. I know Level 12 doesn’t sound a lot but I worked hard for it and I realized that upon opening my 1000 reviews today that I got most of them wrong after over 2 months worth of vacation since I got tired. I don’t really know what I want right now. Can you guys share your thoughts on this. Maybe it’ll help me decide. Thanks
PS. I actually got my first burns today and that just got me feeling conflicted since I burned over 50 already (I don’t think resetting to level 5 will erase the burns tho [or will it]). Anyways, thanks everyone!
I would say you have at some point or another “known” all the words that you don’t “remember” at this moment. I think it would be faster to tough it out for a couple of weeks. You can try to set an amount of reviews per day and try to motivate yourself by meeting that quota. Whatever you choose it’ll feel demotivating at first but I think in the time it takes to get to level 12 from lvl 5 you can definitely get back on track.
PS: I would recommend getting the leech training userscript because you are probably going to suffer the most on those non-jukugo vocab words. Keep us posted!
People have come back from a backlog of 1000 reviews, 2000, 3000 - and been back to business as usual within a month. It’s really not as bad as it appears, just have to consistently chip away at it over the course of a week or so. At ~150 a day you’ll have 1000 review backlog sorted.
With regard to forgetting a bunch - so what? Why reset? If you get one wrong it’ll go back to apprentice level anyway and you’ll see it again.
I’ve been there. Somehow, kanji after kanji, level after level it turns into a race.
I could not handle thousand of reviews and returned to lvl 5. It is better now as I do not hurry.
Also, I started classes and actually have opportunity to use what I’ve learned in here. It also feels better.
Is it not natural enough that after two months of vacation you need to remember everything? I mean, after two months you can bury many things in your memory. I think you still have them somewhere. You just have to dig it out
You can go back to zero, but do you think you really need it?If your answers are wrong now, Wanikani will not let you down so easily. He will put it in your reviews until you give good answers. Take your time and do your reviews. Everything will be alright.
Not sure of the benefits of resetting but I don’t think I would. If you get it wrong then it goes down to some level then you just pick it back up again. One piece of advice from jpspereira (can’t remember his name exactly atm) is to review your items immediately after learning them. I found I have a much better remembrance rate that way. Although I do not know what it’s like at your level as I’m just a lowly scrub, I feel that the srs intervals are working great for me so far. I guess if you’re getting so many wrong it can feel like absolute crap and would feel better just to reset so I can understand it in that sense. Losses are supposedly felt with twice the magnitude of a win.
Either way, if you decide to reset then I can add you to my leaderboard and we can race each other! Or just keep track or pace as it isn’t meant to be a race.
I can’t tell you if you should or should not reset, and if you can conquer that review stack. But my advice to you going forward is not to take breaks. Do your reviews every day. Do not go on vacation. If you go on literal vacation, try to keep up with your reviews. When you first sign up, you get an e-mail (or something) that says something to the effect of needing to do your reviews every day, even on your birthday. Take that seriously. It’s a long road and you have to do your best to stay focused for the duration.
I was in a similar situation at about level 42-ish. I was doing my reviews by earliest level first at the time, and couldn’t get around to finishing the later level reviews for a while. Once I got to them, I realized I didn’t recognize them at all–it sounds like you’re in a sort of similar situation. It also seems you’ve already identified which level you should reset to, if you wanted to do that. That’s a great start. I’ll tell you, I found the level I should have reset to was about 40. When I did that, it cleared out the excess of reviews I had left, and I felt refreshed and motivated again, rather then disheartened and overwhelmed.
I think you still have them somewhere. You just have to dig it out 
