He probably just meant the average student gets swamped. With the exception of adjuncts, I feel like most professors like to posture a bit to keep good students honest with their studies.
If you get there and it’s moving at a good pace for you that’s awesome, but given that you’re already level 20 on WK you’ll probably have a much easier time than your peers. There’s only 145 kanji used in the lessons for all of Genki I, and WK teaches all of them by around level 10 or so. Even if writing comes up, being familiar with a framework for radicals will make it much easier to jump into than someone seeing it for the first time. They have to target the 101 class at completely beginners new to everything so for them it might go “really quickly”.
By self-study I was referring to starting grammar while doing WK, something like what eggs suggested. Unless a trimester is much shorter than I’m thinking you’ll finish WK well before classes will finish beginner grammar, but that kind of kills off good reading practice (which I’m assuming is a big of part why anyone would want to learn kanji anyway).
Oh I see. Right now, since the prof said I can only skip one trimester and then begin in 102 in the second term, I feel like it would be worthwhile to take 101. Even if I don’t learn a ton, it would be infinitely more speaking and listening practice than what I’ve had thus far. If I take plan to take 101, though, would you still recommend I study grammar that I will just study again? Or just keep learning kanji and such.
Personally, I probably would study it preemptively just to make the most of class. In the best case you know what to listen for or ask the teacher to get the most out of the class, on average you’ll have an easier time reinforcing something than learning on a deadline, in the worst (and usually rarest) case the teacher does their job and corrects a misunderstand you develop. Nowadays I feel like it’s relatively easy to self-study, so when I was taking classes my intention was usually to get the most out of things I could only get in the classroom (eg. asking questions, socializing with peers, “free” speech practice). If I knew a course’s contents beforehand then it meant I’d have more time to focus on other, more difficult classes, work, personal projects, ect.
That said, it sounded like you were busy in the beginning. If your instinct or schedule tells you to run through the first course normally there’s probably no harm. Just try to test the waters and find what works best for you in the end.