Leeches.. and my brain just exploded with rage

WaniKani
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So after the last 10 levels of WaniKani my situation has become pretty screwed up and I’ve had to really slow down and actually start using the vakay mode to stop the barrage of constant never ending reviews.

I’m trying to get it down to a daily amount again I can handle and have a goal to complete.

But these last couple months have been brutal and I’m honestly just fatigued and frustrated with how those levels went. I still have around 500 vocab lessons I still need to go through before I complete the entire course in sense of “having at least studied it all”.

However because I’ve been frustrated over the last couple months and now I just can’t seem to focus very well, my accuracy rate is literal garbage now. Thing is a lot of these reviews I was getting correct in a normal situation. But my mind has taken a “SCREW THIS” attitude to all this and so I just get my ass beat every single day.

My question now is… I need more specialized work when it comes to these leeches so I can perhaps remove the trigger around seeing them in reviews.

I like the new reviewing of incorrect reviews… however when I do 300-400 lessons and I’m getting half of them wrong because by the time I get to half way through that many I’m just getting pissed and frustrated, things just continually keep going down hill.

So the next thing I know I’m having to do half of these again in the next 4-8 hours or whatever and it keeps a perpetual amount of reviews always smashing through.

Another problem that happens is my reviews that are in Enlightened show up and I start getting stuff wrong that I DO/DID know but my mind is like “Hell no” still. So I had to get a script that makes it so I don’t see those right now while I work this mental part out.

What I feel my mind needs is to get these reviews down to zero so that I can focus on smaller packet sized daily reviews and then be able to use the leech trainer to work on those that I get wrong in a smaller capacity.

But to get there I’d like something a bit different than the leech trainers I have and the built in one now. When I end up with 150+ of these things to work on in the leech trainers, it doesn’t really work well with me because I end up forgetting vocab and kanji before I am able to go through this 150 again.

Which is actually normal, but it’s just too many reviews in between before I can get back to the ones I got wrong to keep correcting them by seeing them over and over again.

I like the leech trainer when there is around 10-20 that I can work on, and I can focus on those until I am able to get them all right multiple times. But having to go through and do 150 just to try again, it frustrates the hell out of me and then I don’t feel like I can just keep doing it until I get them all. It’s overwhelming.

My question is, is there anything that would break this into smaller bits that I can work on? I don’t mean smaller sizes in the sense of just having random vocab and kanji showing up. I’d like to work on the same vocab and kanji each time then be able to move onto another cluster.

Maybe I just have wishful thinking with something like this… I’ve done a lot of this via paper and pen the last 15 months when things got too out of control via leeches… which helped me keep my accuracy rate to around 80%+ from what wkstats showed, but it was usually only for a handful of leeches nothing like I have now, so I’m going to be honest, I won’t be doing a paper and pen thing with hundreds of these.

If there is nothing anyone can think of for wanikani, is there something that can take these leeches onto another platform elsewhere easily so I can work on them there like how I want?

I’m trying to tippy toe around not pissing myself off and making things worse moving forward. I’ve already come so far, I’m not in the business of giving up now. I at least feel like if I need to go through the program again that’s fine, but I want to get everything learned and into the master level before resetting to anything…

You may or may not know… but the real last level name of WaniKani isn’t reality… it’s “WaniKani Forever”. So I don’t mind having to go around the board again. My new home IS Japan so there is no reason for me to bitch out on this.

Thanks for any ideas,

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I think if I were in your boat*, I’d reset a few levels (roughly to where you started skipping lessons, or where you start getting massive amounts of leeches) and then wait a little while until you pick up lessons again. This way you can deal with the incoming amount of Enlightened reviews. Once you’re in a place where you feel comfortable picking up new lessons, try a slow and steady pace in order to avoid overloading yourself (e.g. I do 5 kanji and 10 vocab each morning).

*Full disclosure: I did this three times already, and never regretted it.

Exactly! It sounds brutal to reset especially since you reached the top already… but it’s not a race :woman_shrugging:

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I would sort reviews by level and make sure to clear up to a certain level every day. Let the higher levels pile up while you regroup. Also do your lessons for the lower levels before doing the reviews for higher levels. Vocab and kanji reinforce each other

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I ended up in a (maybe slightly less severe) situation like this towards the end. I didn’t reset any levels, but it’s not bad advice, since it’s the only way to go back and do this differently in a way where the echoes of it don’t keep coming back to haunt you for months.

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I don’t think “done” is a precise point. It’s more of a fuzzy transition from learning by SRS to using the learning techniques and the solid foundation of basics on your own in the wild. I guess there’s the complete-ist satisfaction of doing “all” of WaniKani, but at some point you’re doing it just to do it, if you know what I mean. Not having done those specific vocabulary lessons, what, 500 vocabulary words out of…the entire Japanese language? You’ll pick up the ones you need at some point.

Which is not a literal answer to your questions, but just a vote that it’s ok to feel done even if you’re not “done”. Do WaniKani when it feels fun for you, and not when it doesn’t. 59, 60? Same thing.

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I think Kumirei’s got your best answer. Use Reorder Ultimate 2 to take things in chunks, one level at a time. Today I had over 200 reviews since I was ill and skipped a day, so I’m doing everything below the my current top 3 levels first to get it done quickly and out of the way.

To help break the habit of inputting a bad response, I will put banana/ばなな into the input screen if I’m less than 80% confident in my response.

Other methods of leech killing will take more time and effort. I’m a strong visual learner to I’ve been making little graphics for my leeches as they come up now, especially the similar word ones.

WK in the mix
WK in the mix576×749 102 KB

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Just be aware that it only works in compatibility mode for the time being. :sob:

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I’m working on my own reordering script atm >.> Will hopefully release it in a couple of days

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Level 1 reset
Level 1 reset1028×972 129 KB

I planned to do this again anyway when I got most things into guru… so, this is what I ended up doing.

I’ll be a level 60 again, but it’ll be to the 2nd power next year :stuck_out_tongue:

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What’s the point? Just consume content and look up what you can’t remember, eventually you’ll absorb it. And if it doesn’t come up then it can’t have been that important

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Why reset from level 60? Isn’t it better to do something like KameSame or similar? There’s after all no point in re-doing the radicals?

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Exactly. I think there are two types of people. One gets off the training wheels of Wanikani and actually learns real Japanese, the other stays here; which personally I don’t understand, but each to their own I guess.

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You’re not resetting back to level 1, are you? If you do reset, I suggest going down only one or two levels. If not that, then taking a break and coming back later. Turn on vacation mode, come back after a day (or more) and then focus on low level reviews first. Going slow has been what I found keeps me from getting angry/frustrated. It’s hard to get out of the rut without a little break. You might be a little burned out.

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I decided to run through again while working on Bunpro as well, I also have other things I’m doing.

I’m not in this for the short haul of getting to level 60 and that’s that…

I’ve noticed my kanji reading for easier kanji has gotten rough… but it’s my way of taking a break from wanikani without really taking a break.

I’ve gone through school in Japan to N4 and I’ve gone through level 1 - 15 here on WaniKani multiple times now since I jumped on in like 2016 or so.

I have my reading as well. I’m going to be living for good in Japan later this year (for good into the future), so it’s not a big deal just to keep on going through the basics.

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What’s the benefit of restarting compared to using a script that allows for repetitive training?
I didn’t use any script so far and my time on Wanikanin also comes to an end soon, it’s time to think about how to continue.

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My way of continuing is using all the knowledge I learned during the 14 months making it to level 60 and using it during these lower levels. I learned a lot on how I learned about half way through, and now with the new review leeches addon… I want to go through it like this now.

I’m physically going to be living in Japan on a permanent basis as soon as next month I’ve got my CoE in hand, it’s now just coming down to getting a dog setup with a titer test so that after 6 months we can come back and get him… so I have that to look forward to continue my education (moving to Japan again). I have Bunpro and I’m doing other things as well. For me, in this moment, resetting to level 1 is sort of like a well deserved rest for awhile, because sure… absolutely I’m dominating the living hell out of it and will be for a long while… but I’m also going through all these kanji and doing my own memes and stories around them like I started to do around half way.

Don’t get me wrong sometimes WaniKani / Kochi does a good story, but I found because they were longwinded I’d forget a lot of them… and guess what? Most of the higher kanji level kanji I did my own with I remember no problem. There are simple kanji I’m embarrassed that I can’t remember because of that. And yeah, sure I could do the scripts and what not… and trust me I did dabble with them. But I don’t like how they are setup in the long run compared to the regular SRS of WaniKani.

Having the SRS on this how it is, is not a problem for me. In fact I like it because I also have other things to do during the day too i.e. my actual business I’m creating in Japan with my partner, so it keeps me accountable… I’ve tried Anki and I honestly keep giving it a go, but… I just can’t seem to understand what the hell it wants me to do to get it to work similarly to WaniKani. I’ll keep trying though when I have time.

I’m moving on to about 500 days straight of WaniKani and the last levels got insane and a lot of the vocab and what not was not helping me move forward. So… I’ve returned to the basics and I will see these things again and no doubt I will learn many of them a lot quicker in the real world as well…

I only see this as a good thing and recommitment to my Kanji studies even if it’s slower than some would like, right now it’s fine… but it also gives me a buffer to work on grammar more so… because kanji and vocab is not my weak point now, it’s always been grammar and listening comprehension, so I’m going to focusing more so on that as well with the free time I will have with these lower levels for a while.

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I share the same energy with this post. All of my leeches are words/concepts that I have no care of knowing in japanese. There’s just too much pointless vocab!

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Thank you, that’s a bit like I think about it as well. I also have to keep reviewing the lower Kanjis because I keep forgetting how to write them, that’s the reason why I joined here in the first place.

Good point. My next step is most probably an effort to rewrite and rearrange the mnemonics in the Anki deck I created in order to minimalize and rewrite some. I already pruned them but some are not sticking at all. (Might be due to the fact that I am still traumatized from the tsunami in 2011)

Sounds interesting, good luck!

I use Anki a lot for training for the Kanken and I think it is not necessary to make it work like WaniKani. You don’t need to type the answer to memorize it and the SRS of Anki is good enough even if you don’t use it everyday in my impression. Of course it doesn’t “force” you to use it like Wanikani but I think it is the same in Anki like in many things: if you keep it minimal it works best.

I am in the same boat since level 47. Actually I am just pushing forward in order to have it done somehow to the end in order to be able to review things in a way that suits my needs best (taking the Kanken) as soon as possible. There really is an oversaturation of vocabulary at the moment and I don’t enjoy doing the reviews as I did in the levels before 47.

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Don’t like KameSame… it’s off putting I tried it.

Good idea, just not my cup of tea sadly.

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What’s the ratio of useless vocabulary in the upper levels? I just learned 一文字 (いちもんじ) but that word is rarely written in kanji and the word itself is used in a very limited manner. ひともじ is more common and useful word for 一文字. I can see why they used it but it’s kind of a waste of time.