:durtle_hello: Let's Durtle the Scenic Route šŸ¢

Hey folks! Hereā€™s another idea Iā€™ve been trying out recently, which helps balance my review schedule to fill in gaps of upcoming reviews but without overloading myself with too many new lessons too quickly:

You might think of it in a ā€˜scenic routeā€™ kind of way as, revisiting old friends. :sweat_smile: Basically, it amounts to ā€˜resurrectingā€™ previously-burned items that ā€“ despite being ā€˜burnedā€™ ā€“ I came across later on in my ā€˜journeyā€™ and just couldnā€™t remember. For example, I recently came across the word 音 during a grammar review on BunPro.jp, and I just couldnā€™t remember how to pronounce it as a vocabulary word (恊ćØ).

So I searched it up on WaniKani and found the pronunciation, which I had previously burned long ago. At the same time, I noticed that I had a day or two coming up in my WaniKani Review Forecast which only had a few reviews scheduled (for me, less then 15 or 20 makes for a ā€˜slow dayā€™; I prefer around 30-ish per day).

So, seeing as 音 is a pretty common word, and seeing as I had a spot of ā€˜free timeā€™ in my upcoming schedule, I decided to use the Resurrect button on the bottom of the itemā€™s page to reset it back to Apprentice from Burned. And just for good measure, I also resurrected the related 音 kanji item, and a couple of related vocabulary items.

This has some nice advantages!

  1. Normally, if I spot a slow day coming up in my review schedule, Iā€™ll do a batch of new lessons, since that usually indicates that Iā€™m running low on Apprentice and Guru items. But what if Iā€™m already going a little too fast and want to slow things down a bit? Well, instead of filling in the schedule gap with something new to learn, why donā€™t I fill it in with something old that Iā€™ve unfortunately forgotten? Reviewing resurrected items (revisiting old friends!) is much much less stressful, has a nice ā€˜familiarā€™ feeling, and eliminates any feeling of disappointment at having forgotten a so-called ā€˜burnedā€™ item.

  2. At the same time, it balances out my review schedule with some low-difficulty, low stress items, so that I always have at least a handful of items I can review each day, which helps me keep up the daily habit of doing WK reviews, but doesnā€™t overload me with too many new items at once.

  3. It helps prevent me from ā€˜powering throughā€™ levels too quickly, which would deny me the enjoyment of Durtling the Scenic Route! Of course I could power through, but I donā€™t need to, nor do I actually want to. So, taking the time to ā€˜revisit old friendsā€™ Iā€™ve forgotten seems like just as legitimate a way to spend my time learning Japanese as constantly always learning only new items!

  4. Probably other advantages I canā€™t think of right now, but thatā€™s plenty enough for this post! :sweat_smile:

So, Iā€™ve recently been doing this for a few other words/kanji here and there that Iā€™ve burned but now forgotten. For me, itā€™s a great alternative to only having the option to fill in gaps in my schedule with new lessons.

Hopefully this is a helpful idea for anyone else looking to fill in those gaps in your schedule to ā€˜smooth it outā€™ so you have roughly the same number of reviews per day. If you donā€™t yet feel ready to take on more new lessons, and youā€™ve recently discovered some ā€˜burnedā€™ items (especially if they are common words!) that you just canā€™t remember, feel free to resurrect them and even resurrect their related vocabs, kanji, or even radicals. Theyā€™ll refresh your memory and on ā€˜the second burningā€™, Iā€™m sure they will stick with you much longer, yet they wonā€™t require much stress or effort to ā€˜get to knowā€™, since you basically already know them! Theyā€™re just like old friends! :sweat_smile:

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