Yo,
So recently I had my first kid (yay me!) so the last couple months I’ve had WK on vacation mode with 800+ reviews. I’m living in Japan so I really need to keep up on kanji so recently I came back to WK trying to chip away at reviews. Been really slow. I do maybe 30-80 at a time then activate vacation mode. It’s been a couple weeks of 40% ish review grades (pretty discouraging) and I finally got to 0 reviews. I’m leaving it off vacation mode now but still feeling discouraged. Any tips or tricks to keep this train from dying?
11 Likes
Try to reset a level or three and see what that does to your volume and accuracy.
After an absence, anything you didn’t get to enlightened is probably not going to stick.
2 Likes
u can actually reset to any levels?
I reset recently for a year, and my experience has been that accuracy when you’re still cleaning up stuff is going to be horrible. Mine was possibly even worse - 20%. But it bounces back (for me to 70-80%) really quick because you probably already did it before - give it some time. Though I did reset 10 levels… But in retrospect in think that was too much. Should’ve reset at most 5 levels.
3 Likes
If you click on the icon in the upper right corner of the Dashboard to bring up the menu, one of the options is “Danger Zone.” You can do it there.
1 Like
I’ve thought about reseting a level or two but for now I’m too competitive to concede defeat that way. But probably the best way huh.
1 Like
Other users have toughened it out. Though I have no experience of either resetting or getting back on the WK train after an absence.
I think you just have to be honest with yourself here: choose what you think you have a better chance of success at. Either way it’s gonna take effort and work.
Do you have user scripts to help you dealing with those items you’ve forgotten? 
Before resetting I would go there. For example, get the Item Inspector to see which Items you’re failing and use the Self-Study Quiz to do some intensive training of them. Until they stick.
You might be able to avoid resetting that way. 
I think you can do it! Ganbatte! ^^
10 Likes
It seems like user scripts is the way to go. Thanks for the idea!
2 Likes
I recently posted about resetting 3 levels. It has helped me a lot. Now I feel good about Wanikani again.
Brute forcing and getting the fresh stuff wrong again and again did not work for me.
2 Likes
Im there with you. I have 500 reviews and my last round was 49%… Horrible. But I’ll plow through it and just see what happens before resetting. Just have to make it fun again somehow 
I’m thinking resetting a level or two might be good. Did you get through those reset levels pretty fast since you were familiar with them?
I spend a week or 2 off because of new semester starting up, came back to 1300 reviews.
But yeah im just gonna chip away at it, not really a big deal if you set a doable daily target.
Patience and perseverance are the real MVP’s
And also i dont want to do them all in a day and have massive days hitting the review pile again later so spreading them out is much better.
1 Like
I know what you mean, I’ve just been there myself. I stopped WK for some month when university started again and for other personal problems. Came back to it with 2100+ reviews, let me tell you I felt prety discouraged too…
I spent the last 3 weeks doing 300 reviews a day to try to make them disappear, and I started with an accuracy of around 20-30%. Like a week ago, I finally reached a day with 0 remaining reviews and my accuracy went up to around 80-95%, so I’m pretty happy about it.
Now before I start doing lessons again, I want my future review count to go down a bit (maybe under 400 reviews planned in the next 7 days) since I currently have 650 planned.
I also started grammar and kanji writing to kinda change a bit what I’m doing and seeing and keep me motivated, maybe doing other japanese language related things can help you too to regain some motivation and confidence.
Also, university started again 3 days ago, so let’s hope we’ll all achieve to stick to it and progress further together :).
We all learn differently, but I took a 180ish day break from WaniKani and retained all of the information just fine. But you are at a much higher level than me, so it’s probably a lot more stuff that you were supposed to remember. I think that you might be able to go without reseting, but reseting just a few levels back might help. (I haven’t reseted before so I have no experience with it, just by the way.)
1 Like
It’s probably going to be roughly the same either way since the low accuracy rate is going to push a lot of those items back to Apprentice anyway.
But there is definitely a psychological thing to powering through. 
As long as you’re moving forward it’s all good. 
1 Like
I paused in about the same place as you and didn’t do any reviews or new lessons for ages. I think it was about a year. It took me a while to get back down to zero reviews and then I waited until I had under 100 at apprentice level before I started doing any new lessons again. It took quite a while because of the high number I’d forgotten and kept getting wrong.
Anyway… by the time I’d gotten my apprentice numbers down, my guru, master and enlightened numbers were also down, and now it’s amazing. It was like clearing a blocked drain and I’m progressing really quickly again.
Just telling you this because it sounds like you need motivation. It’s totally worth it.
I tortured myself and got a bunch of stuff wrong for a couple weeks until I started getting them right lol. I ignored any new lessons until then. there is a light at the end of the tunnel!
3 Likes
dont despair! Here is my progress
1 Like
you get 49% after vacation mode ?
1 Like
You are amazing!! Life is probably a lot different now. You have a baby and you are studying Japanese! Don’t be hard on yourself. I have unlimited time to do lessons and review every day because I’m not taking care of another human.
You’re like a superhero to me. I have no idea how parents do it.