man, i’m glad i’ve asked. I think i approached this whole thing all wrong, and bit off way more than i could chew without understanding how to make it work for me. Thanks for your help…everyone.
I probably should invest more time in learning how to use this program instead of my brute force approach, it’s clearly not working for me. lol
Like Missmisc said a little bit ealier, use vacation mode if you have to take an extended break. You stop accumulating reviews. Try to use it sparingly, but don’t let yourself get buried in 1000s of review items either.
I’m going to, i’ve got it down to 586. So i’m going to get it under 500 tonight, and not do anymore reviews until i’m caught up and my review count is something a normal human being who isn’t glued to the phone 3-4 hours a day can do regularly. Then start working smart, instead of thinking pushing through it is the answer. It’s really bad for my retention.
If you had a computer, I’d recommend using the reorder script.
You can choose sort the levels and work your way up from the early levels.
If you do 100 reviews today, they’re going to come back to you within a week.
It’s best to slow down, do little by little, so they don’t return in a such a huge batch.
I’d recommend writing down all the wrong items after a small review and review them again in a notebook.
I was trying to write down the sentences of the words that i got wrong, i’ve had some success using that method with other vocabulary words. But the batch is so high, i couldn’t stick with it. But maybe once i work it down, i can use that method to cement it in my mind.
Sentences? How about just the word itself and the meaning?
Have a look at the Show us your handwriting in Japanese to see some ideas.
It looks like some users are writing items they have trouble on.
i will check that out, thanks. sentences make it easier for recall for me. But, I’m still trying to figure out how i best learn, i’m always open for suggestion.
Also, keep in mind that Level 14 one hell of a level and I hate it a lot.
I think that, to me, Lv14 has been the trickiest yet. Slow down and take it easy! WaniKani is not a race after all.
True, part of it is that i’ve been studying the language for years. and i’m a little frustrated that i’m not where i feel i should be, so i just tried to push through this as much as i could. It’s my own fault, i know.
I’m going to change my approach after i get caught up, got it down to 551. i’ll catch up and then just like you said, slow it WAYY down. Because otherwise i’ll never get where i want to be.
That’s a good idea. Slowing down may even be faster in the long run. I’ve kept aprentice items below 150 and got to 16 within 6 months. If you can stay on top of reviews and pace your lessons, I think you’ll speed up a lot.
I got through Wanikani by doing all my reviews everyday, no matter how tired I was and by doing a limited amount of lessons everyday (fx 10), so that the flow of reviews was always even (if you do 50 lessons at once, you’ll be kicked in the nuts by them all at once again, which can be exhausting). And if you KNOW you’ll be unable to do your reviews for awhile, use the vacation mode!
I don’t necessarily agree with the others about slowing down, it’s more about steadying your effort. It’s also good to have a goal for how quickly you want to finish Wanikani, if you make too slow progress that can be discouraging as well.
Wanikani makes a great effort at making learning fun, but in the end it’s sheer hard work and dedication. You shouldn’t look for motivation but rather habit. Do reviews in the morning with your breakfast and then again at a particular time in the evening, or just do a small batch at a time throughout the day. It should be as natural to you as brushing your teeth in the morning - you do that even if you’re tired.
Thanks, that is kind of how i did it. Except i did all lessons as soon as they popped up. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to catch up. I mean i did take about 6 months off. and i finally got it into the 400s (494), and it’s going to drop another 100 reviews on me tomorrow, which means to get it under 400, i’m going to have to do 200+.
once I am finally caught up, i’m going to work down my apprentices for sure, because i’m adding more to it every day since i had such a long lay off. I did about 150+ today, and the net result was actually ADDING 20 more to my apprentice than i had yesterday at this time.
I feel like this is going to get a LOT harder before it gets any easier, even after i catch up.
Ok, is there a way to set it on vacation mode so i can work this down? Last night i got it under 400 (389), then 20 minutes later it jumped up to 410, so i worked it back down to 390, i woke up this morning and it’s at 465.
this is getting absurd
You can’t do reviews during vacation mode.
Do you have the timeline script or anything? It sounds like you’re surprised by the coming workload, but that script allows you to see it graphed out well in advance.
I had an idea it was coming, after i worked it down it say i was going to get 125 over the next day, i just wasn’t expecting it to hit me 6 hours later for 70+
how do you use scripts?, because this review stack is sure fighting back.
Ok, so i got it under 100 (89) and when i exited the review, it instantly jumped up to 120. and now it’s saying i’ll get 193 coming in the next day… Is this pretty much my life now? Until i get my apprentice count down (322)?
Well, your apprentice total is the number of items that will appear in 2 days or less, so yeah… you need to get that number down, but the good news is that if you get a good percentage it should go down within those 2 days.
it’s every 2 days? That’s not bad. I should have those taken care of sooner than later. It’s already jumped up another 25 since i made the last comment 
I’ll get there, thanks a lot for your help and advice and keeping me sane through this madness of catching up
The SRS levels go from 8hr, 1day, 2 days, 1 week or something like that. The last level in Apprentice is 2 days. If you pass that review, you’ll move that item into Guru and it will come next week.
^^That’s it, but add a 4 hour in first.