yeah, man. I got it all the way down to 0 last night/this morning. and when i got it to zero, it shot up to 35 right after i finished my review. But it was 1am, so i went to sleep, i woke up and it was at 130. I’ve been fighting it here and there 20-30 at a time. and right now it’s at 180.
It really is a battle and it is fighting me tooth and nail. But i will get it under control…eventually
It’ll settle down after a week or two of pacing yourself.
I’d also advise not doing any lesson for the next two weeks or so. Because those 320-ish apprentice items are gonna come back in a big batch of guru items.
I’m not sure whether you’ve worked it out in the meantime, but you were asking how to install scripts a few days ago? This thread has an explanation:
It’s not very difficult, honestly! The Ultimate Timeline, which will probably really help you in terms of knowing what’s coming and being able to plan your reviews, can be found here:
I hope so, because it is a fight right now. Got it down to 0 again and it dropped 35 on me immediately. So I knocked that out to get the sweet sweet 0 review screen, then went to sleep and woke up to another 95 reviews, then did that and got another 3 dropped. and right now checks hesitantly 0 reviews for the next hour. so i have a short reprieve, but it says it’ll drop 236 on me over the course of the next day which is ALMOST all of my apprentices (281), so hopefully after today or tomorrow it’ll calm down for a bit.
oh my god, thank you so much for how to install a scripts. It is VERY reasonable moving forward, i won’t fall asleep with zero and wake up with 100+ anymore. and each review is very manageable. Looks like the storm is finally over. Phew… now to catch up on my Anki backlog. 
it never ends, well, at least not until i’m fluent. lol
That’s great to hear! I’ve been feeling kind of empathetically stressed seeing how horrendous your reviews have been 
Just watch out for when they all come back as Guru items (you got this!)
Also dont forget, if you are using wanikani and putting in the effort you ARE progressing. Yeah, there are levels and shit but those are just handy dipsticks to show you where you are. Reviews are the most important aspect of Wanikani, not lessons, and where most learning happens, by far. And even when you droo something down to Guru or even Apprentice, its dor a reason; its to help you remember better. Thats progress. You just gotta zoom out to see it.
I love that WK is gameified but sometimes i get too into the game aspect and forget about the learning aspect, the true goal. Feel good youre back in the habit and dont linger on the homescreen too much.
Yeah, that was my problem. I was just in a mad dash to the finish. and i was blazing through at first, which is something i did with most of my training. The reason i didn’t get as much out of rosetta stone or pimsleur is because i was more focused on getting through it, then the actual learning aspect.
I hate that my apprentices are so freaking high, but I know that it’s high because i don’t know the words. When i take the time to really get to know them, they will go away. and even if something i thought i learned years ago i forget and it drops down to apprentice, that’s ok too. Just means i need to keep working on it until it’s really in my memory. Once i have them all down to the point where i can do 100+ in a 30 minute timeframe, and get my apprentices down as low as i can manage, then i’ll start the process again with a new batch. That’s the only way i’m going to get better.
now i just need to really dial in on my grammar and ACTUAL usage of the language, not just watching jdramas (which are few and far between anyways)
I’ll be ready for them when they come back as guru items. What i love most about WaniKani compared to other programs is that i really understand what each individual kanji means, so when i see words with multiple, i can figure out the meaning even if i forget what it means when i first see it. So I’ll be more than ready when it comes back around. Thanks for all your help. It’s been rough, but I think it’ll be smooth sailing from here on.
I just need to get back into Bunpro now, never did get off the ground with that one.
OK, so i have my apprentices down to 189, what is a good spot to keep it at before i start doing lessons again?I only have 26 waiting at the moment.
189 is insane, it’s way, way too high !!
Never go over 100/120 would be my advice.
I did same the mistake as you in the beginning, doing all my lesson at the same time, which let my apprentice number went over 150, and, around level 12, it almost got me. I think I got lucky, around that time I read in the forum people warning to not let apprentice shoot up too high, so I could fix it before burning out.
With reorder script and ignore script it’s perfectly doable to have a quick pace of 7 to 10 days level-up average while never going over 100/120 apprentice, that’s how I do now.
what is a reorder script? i was up in the 300+ just a few days ago. i had a massive backlog that was 6 months old, so needless to say a lot of words were dropped to apprentice.
It depends entirely on how many reviews you want to do per day, but most people who try to keep a cap on their apprentice items go for 100, 120 or 150. For me 150 was fine, but now that I’ve got stuff coming up for Enlightenment I try to keep them below 100 (I’m not too fussy about it though).
I would definitely get them below 150 at least, and given that you are are likely to have some big surges of reviews coming up from Guru items you might even want to just wait it out for a couple of weeks and focus purely on reviews - but if you’ve managed to get Ultimate Timeline working you should be able to see what the review load looks like?
yeah, i see it. sneaky little bugger just dropped 30+ on me at 1am. it’s manageable now, i just want to know when a good time is to move forward a little bit. …now i do. thanks again 
If you’ve just got it under control I would try and get down to about 80 before doing more lessons. You’re still going to get lots of stuff in guru coming back that could drop back down to apprentice so having a buffer to make sure it stays at around 100 would be good
Based on this thread, you shouldn’t even consider doing lessons for at least a few more weeks. That’s the only thing you need to do. You don’t need scripts or anything. Just stop doing lessons until you are bored. And when you get bored, do like 5 or 10 lessons. Then maybe do 5-10 more in another day or two. Otherwise, you’ll be right back here complaining about how many reviews you have.
lol, fair enough. I feel like the timeline script eliminates the surprises, the surprises are what was getting me. getting it down to 0 then waking up to 130 stuff like that. Though i doubt that’ll happen quite so much moving forward even if i didn’t have the timeline. But your advice is noted and appreciated all the same. Thanks
That’s great. It’s not that I don’t think scripts can be useful. Glad you are getting an edge from that one.
I’m curious if you are struggling to keep up with WK, why pile Anki on top of that? I hope you have time for study outside of these two things.