Aaaaand back to square one. 
Took too much time off to deal with other stuff and fell way behind. Oh well, Iāll get to 60 when if I get there.
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Reached level 21 after 31 days! Officially now in the death levels 
Iāve been mixing up a few similar looking characters (ex:å° and å ,ē¶ and ēµ”), so I need to sit down again sometimes and try to really study them. Did start the spring reading challenge, but fell off this month due to life (as per usual). However, I read Japanese comments here and there on youtube, and I can never get over the feeling of actually recognizing words and kanjis (I could read the word āhistoryā for example and had to double take cuz I couldnāt believe I could finally read this word ahaha).
Iām really hoping I can get back to having a more concrete schedule. I said this a few levels back, but I really fell off in terms of keeping things consistent due to various commitments. Will I finally get my act together next month? Weāll see. In the meanwhile, happy durtling 
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One thing I do whenever I hit one of these sets of confusing kanji is to come up with new mnemonics of my own, if the WK ones arenāt distinct or memorable enough. Then I write the mnemonic in the editable Notes textbox on the reading or meaning section.
If even that doesnāt work, I will usually look up the kanjis and some of the words and sentences that contain them on Jisho.org. Then once I get a better sense of the distinction/nuance between a pair or even a set of related, confusing kanji, Iāll add some extra User Synonyms to the different items. Sometimes I might not even end up using the new synonyms as answers during reviews (although other times I do), but mainly they are there for if/when I get the item wrong again, and I can open up the details and quickly check which āversionā of the vocab/kanji I should have answered, based on the different synonyms associated with them.
Just some ideas that might be helpful. 
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Congratulations!! Glad to see that your consistency really paid off!! Amazing work!! You are the first fellow durtler that Iāve seen reach Level 60, so very inspirational! 
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Congratulations on reaching 60!! 
You are the first Durtle to reach it 
Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.
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Oh, I just noticed in the stats that you joined us at level 6, so have been with us basically from the start! 
May many follow in your path and reach the end
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Yep! I found this thread maybe about a month after I started being active on this forum, so it really was at the beginning of my journey! It looks like my first post was #138 here. I remember looking at the skytree thread and similar groups and not wanting to feel pressured to go fast, so I was very glad to find a group that wasnāt focused on that! 
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There was so many groups with the focus on going fast that I, like many others, felt pressured to go fast as well. I made this group after failing and needing to reset. Iāll probably take a few years to reach the end! But you took about 2 years or so? That is so much more healthy than doing just at the 1 year mark (max speed).
Iāve gone a little too slow, so will probably go faster later. But adjusting speed depending on what time you have for it is very important, rather than pushing ma and burn out 
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Yeah, Iām so glad that I took it slower! Funnily enough, almost every person I started with who was going faster than me did in fact end up dropping off at some point. I can only think of maybe two people who started when I did who actually managed to get to the finish line going faster than me. In the end, slow and steady really does win the race! 
Good luck!! It definitely is possible to go too slow, too, but definitely better than going too fast and burning out! Iām sure youāll figure out the right pace for you at some point!
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Thatās a really neat idea! Thank you for sharing 
I was doing it in the early levels, but I found actually learning to write the characters I mix up with help reinforce the differences. I think I might also incorporate your method as well to better memorize them.
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Leveled up yesterday to level 13! Spent 41 days on level 12. Slow and steady right!? Iāve been really busy lately but Iāve been making sure to do some number of reviews every day even if I donāt have enough time to do all of them.
One thing that was a little frustrating was that I did reviews every day (I swear) but for some reason my heatmap shows a 4 day gap, which broke my 100+ day streakā¦ Oh well. Iām no programmer, so Iām not sure why this happened, but whatever. I just need to keep in mind that my āstreakā doesnāt really matter as long as I keep up the daily habit. 
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WK pushed an update that broke that part of heatmap. If you update your script, itāll record your reviews locally (though if you use WK across multiple devices, it will only track the reviews on the device itās installed on). There are a few ways to fix your streak manually, if you really want. Look at recent posts in the thread for more information:
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Ohhh, that makes sense, thank you for the information! Iāve started doing reviews on my phone lately since Iāve been out of the house a lot, so that must be why.
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hush hush 
!! congrats!!! 
Iāve been level 10 for 9 days and I only completed the radicals part until today. I was so busy and then went on a mini trip and now I have a maybe too relaxed attitude towards the mountain of lessons waiting.
Today I was wondering if it was okay to ignore the pile for almost a week, Iām enjoying a lot the less than 50 reviews a day 
ā¦
I had 8 items in Apprentice until tonight when I reluctantly learned 25 new items out of guilt. Now I have only 33 and I plan to keep it like this for a bit. I feel I had more time to read manga and enjoy the new vocab Iāve learned.
Also the Master to Enlightened old pile is making the rounds (specially Sundays ) which reminded my of the famous words ofā¦
Itās happeningā¦ the prophecy was real
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If it helps you get more reading in, then yes it is worth it.
Find the max apprentice number you are comfortable with.
I like to keep it under 50.
These last few weeks Iāve been so busy I havenāt added a single one, so Iām actually down to zero 
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Iāve been so busy lately that I havenāt done any new lessons, only durtled my reviews.
So now Iām nearly clearing out all items
I will lessons again once my schedule clears up. Having cleared out all items like this means I have no bad leeches left either, so I might even be able to speed up a bit.
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Woot woot! I finally finished level 29, and made it to 30! Yayyyy!!! 
Itās been a long one! It took me 64 days to finish 29, which is only about a day shorter than my longest break of 65 days from WK, which was between level 3 and level 4, when I was saving up to get the lifetime membership. (Well, except for the burn-out break which is no longer in my stats because I reset to level 7 after it.)
I admit I was actually a bit worried about breaking that early record, since it would have become the dark-grey column on my stats page as the longest level. I donāt know. Intellectually I know it doesnāt really matter, but psychologically, I just didnāt want to āgo thereā.
But, I didnāt ārushā the level to beat it. I just did a few more sessions and slightly longer sessions for the last couple of weeks to make sure I would be able to Guru all my kanji in time before the 65 day ālimitā.
Partly it took much longer because I had been maintaining a bit of a higher pace in the past several months, but I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed and started to lose motivation, and so I started to do a lot fewer reviews per session. (Although, I did manage to keep doing at least some reviews every single day, which I think is what really got me through.)
As I was doing fewer reviews per session, my review pile started to grow and grow. But the most important thing I did at that time was to completely stop doing any new lessons until I could find a new comfortable pace and begin to get the review pile back under control.
So, now Iām going at about 2/3 of the pace I was going at before, maybe even a bit less than that. But itās more comfortable and more sustainable. I want to be able to allow myself to be demotivated sometimes (thatās just the ups and downs of life for me), and not have such a giant pile of reviews creep up on me again, so keeping to this slower pace makes sense for my future peace of mind and sanity.
In related news, Iāve noticed that Iām much much much more able to read Japanese now than ever before. Instead of knowing only about 50% of the words in a sentence, and thus not really being able to confidently get the meaning, I think Iām closer to 75% or even more. And having kept up with studying grammar on BunPro, while Iām not able to come up with an accurate English translation for any given sentence, I can at least āget the gistā of what many sentences mean now! 
< gasp! >
Anyway, Iāve been less active here than previously, cuz I was trying to stay focused on doing reviews, but now that the ācrisisā has been successfully tamed and averted, I may end up replying to a few posts I neglected, in the near future.
Hope yāall are doing well with your own journeys. Donāt forget to stop and smell the sakura! 
< sniff sniff >
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This was one of those posts I neglected. That gif is so funny in this context! But I couldnāt reply right away because I was literally experiencing exactly that kind of thing as I first read it. Iām like, "Yeah, even though I predicted it, I still got caught by it myself! 
Dāoh! "
Congrats on level 10! No shame in adjusting your pace to match changing life stuffs, and new incoming Masters and Enlighteneds. Just keep on keepinā on! And enjoy the trip along the way! 
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I reached 0/0 for the first time since level 3! Technically it was yesterday.
I also got my level 60 thread posted! It isā¦ a literal novella in length, so just a warning for that . But I wanted to cover everything that I could, so it is very in-depth.
I added a link to it in my row in the durtle squad chart at the top of the thread because I figured that people coming to this thread might appreciate reading about my experience of getting to level 60 the slow and steady route.
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