My Gritty Japanese Reboot: First Burn! 🔥

Hi all,

I committed to the Crabigator in October last year, and just as I’m about to move into Level 11 – and the Painful stage of WaniKani – I have finally burned my first items. The first to Burn was the leaf radical, and with over 600 items in my Enlightened queue, I imagine I’ll be burning more in the near future. I originally committed to passing JLPT N3 as part of my “gritty reboot” for Japanese language study. I’ve since decided to take N4 in July with a high hope of passing, and N3 in December knowing that if I’m not successful, I gave it a good crack.

After 10 levels, I’m feeling good. I’m in a good routine of reviews, and I try to learn twenty new vocabulary items or five to ten new kanji per day, depending on how far I am through a particular level. Articles on TangoRisto are (slowly) getting easier to read. I attend weekly classes in Japanese, which involve written homework, dialogue practice and listening exercises, so there’s hopefully enough variety in my study to keep me safe from the “Level 15” curse. I also keep a close eye on my stats, so I’ll start slowing it down if I can see myself getting sloppy.

Cheers.

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Congrats!

My first burn is still about a month away, but I’m stoking the fires with anticipation.

Congrats Llanyewe!

What is the level 15 curse? I can infer from the name, though I am curious if it is that people tend to get sloppy, or tend to drop off entirely, at level 15? Is this curse backed by data, or something observed here on the forums?

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Congrats! There will be a lot more coming in from now on. I still have about 2-3 weeks until I start getting mine.

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Thanks for linking to the original thread, RysingDragon. I’m already close to 200 Burns, and I’ve also noticed that my reviews are starting to swell up with Burns-in-waiting. I may eventually choose to bring them back into my regular reviews using a third-party API, but for now, I think I’m reading regularly enough to keep current. I’m sure that when your items are ready to Burn, you’ll see swift progress.

Glad to see you’re still making progress. I had to restart mine, so no burns currently.

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