Hi. I’m back. I made a post about 7 months ago now about my experience of one year on WaniKani, and how much i had learnt. I reached level 27 on that post, and progressed further up until level 35. I had made reslly good progress, and thought that I’d be done in no time! Easy right?
No. No. No. No.
It was a fateful dreary day, December 15th 2021. The day Spider-Man: No Way Home released. I was so unbelievably hyped that I had said the unspeakable.
“I can take a break from WaniKani for one day, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.”
Anyways something bad happened. I thought to myself, let me just take a few days off because I’m feeling burnt out of WaniKani, I can come back in a few days refreshed and ready to learn!
Those few days turned into a few weeks, which then turned into a few months. From December to February I had not gone on WaniKani or any other Japanese app.
I would randomly check on WaniKani, motivated to start up again before seeing a huge 4000 review wall, saying screw it, and closing the app.
I would feel super guilty about this, even when seeing any mention of the Japanese language anywhere I would see the Crabigator looking down on me, disappointed. This lasted for a couple of months until one day, when I actually decided to try to get rid of my 4000+ reviews after suddenly remembering I had paid £60 for a subscription.
So there I was, trying to scale the review wall before realising, “Holy crap. I don’t remember any of this. This just looks like a bunch of lines.” (Which I guess is what all letters are).
For a while I contemplated what to do but I had no idea until one option came to mind, resetting my level. For a couple of weeks I really didn’t want to even consider it, but after a while I had realised that it may be my only option. But what level to reset to? I looked back on all of the previous levels and realised that I barely remembered anything past level 10. So the logical thing to do was to reset to level 10 right?!
I then reset to level 1.
I have no idea why I did this, probably one of those 4am things, but I don’t regret it. I’m only on level 3 right now, but resetting to this level has helped me remake my habit of daily study, and while learning these more simple kanji and vocabulary, I’m able to spend more time on bunpo and trying to fix my atrocious grammar.
Sure I may not reach that level 60 goal this year, but that “short” break has helped me actually reignite my passion for learning Japanese, mainly because I can now say “Hey I can understand those lines!”
Sorry for the long essay, but I just want to get this out there for others who may be stuck in a rut just like I was. As everyone on here says, learning a language isn’t a race, and breaks are good when necessary!
(I can also enjoy the bliss of the first levels being too slow 
)
Well that’s that, thanks for reading! さようなら👋