Like many before, I did a boo-boo
For hard courses, Vacation Mode went through
Now, Apprentice’s build up too soon
And daily reviews have ballooned
Now, I’m at a loss at what I should do
Unfortunately, I have little time in a day to devote to 200+ Apprentice items. So, I’d like to ask WK’s knowledgeable community. As far as I know, there’s no way to shelve a word and learn it again later.
Just stop doing lessons, and do a chunk of reviews whenever you can. 50? 20? It doesn’t really matter, it only affects the speed you’ll get the stack lower. When the wave passes and you’re down to few reviews again, restart lessons.
Sure, some of them will promote from apprentice 2 to apprentice 3 or whatever, and it will appear like the apprentice count is going down more slowly than it should. But the good news is that there are a finite number of reviews and a finite number of items (as long as you aren’t adding more by doing lessons.)
I did the same thing, came back to WK 7 days ago. My strategy is to just do ~100 reviews per day (more when I have the energy) which for me has been enough for my review pile not to grow too unwieldy. The apprentice count will go down eventually.
Yeah it turns out the worst thing you can do is take the day off work and do 2000 reviews all in one day. That just guarantees all those come back in the next stage on the same day again in a giant stack. (somewhat divided if they were from different SRS stages, but same concept, just several smaller big stacks)
Some manageable number per day is not only easier now, but easier later too.
Yeah, I guess the best strategy is to keep turning Vacation Mode on and off until the Apprentice’s plateau. Maybe someday WK will put in a remove/reset function. Thanks for the replies, everyone!
I mean, if that is what you want to do then they do have the option of resetting your level which might help you with your current situation.
But that seems a bit drastic.
Wow, I didn’t know that option was there! Thank you.
The problem is that most of my Apprentice items are from Level 21 up, and I’d be forfeiting hundreds of Enlightened or Burned items.
It’s tough because I’m not making any progress jumping in and out of Vacation Mode, and it could be months before this plateaus and settles. Starting over at Level 21 sounds practical to a degree.
I just don’t have the time to do ~100 per day, though I try to do about 60 per day turning Vacation Mode on and off. Both options seem to be equally as helpful, though any WK user worth their salt would wince at the loss of burned items.
Any advice one way or the other may help me decide on what to do.
It’s really a matter of appearances, psychology, and motivation. For me, I wouldn’t even bother with all the vacation mode toggling, I’d just let them all go into “due today” status and then deal out as many from that as I felt comfortable with every day. Or you could reset to 21, which would take all those out of the “due” status and back to lessons. Same thing, really, they still need to be done.
In theory, if you’ve really burned all those items then it will be no trouble at all to breeze through their reviews 9 more times when they come up. But if the “setback” appearance of the burned number going back down is going to be demotivating, don’t do that.
I’m against level resetting, only because that takes it out of my control. If I suddenly decide I have the time for 500 reviews a day, too bad. I don’t have that choice any more after a reset. Whereas if they’re all in “today’s reviews” I can do as many or as few as I want.
On the other hand, doing the reset makes the lessons show up in the logical level-grouped order, whereas picking out of today’s due reviews gives them much more randomly.
Yeah, I don’t see myself having a different schedule for the rest of the year, so resetting to Level 21 and getting rid of ~200 Apprentice items doesn’t sound awful.
To be honest, I pushed hard to keep doing lessons each day. Back then, there was no Advanced feature, so I kept adding vocab I wasn’t ready for just to keep going full speed ahead. So, when real life became the priority, that momentum was lost.
Thanks for the replies. What I want to do is reset to Level 21. Focus on Kanji almost exclusively using Advanced, leveling up as I go, and adding Vocab as I get those Kanji to Master or Enlightened.
I want to really recognize them before I go back for the vocab. I think that’s a reasonable plan.
Just to double check, you can keep going up levels with Advanced right? Like, focus on Kanji and go back for the vocab whenever? I just don’t want to repeat the mistake. It’d also mean the reset was for nothing.
Well this is just one guy’s opinion, but I think that would be repeating the mistake, letting all the vocabulary from levels past pile up. I’ve had best success since the “today’s lessons” thing was rolled out, just letting it choose for me, doing a consistent number of lessons per day whether radical, kanji, or vocab, and letting the levels fall where they may.
Good luck! Resetting isn’t a terrible idea, to get back to “clean slate” conditions.
Yes, you can. It’s important to do the vocab associated with the kanji or else it’s going to be difficult for them to stick in the long run. My advice is don’t do it. For a comprehensive debate on the pros and cons of skipping vocab, check out one of the six million other threads about it. 
Thank you for the clarification. Don’t worry, my plan isn’t to skip vocabulary entirely. I just want to delay many of them until I feel my individual Kanji recognition is at a level higher than just Guru. This approach is two-pronged: Focus more on Kanji and keep the review pile reasonably sized. This would fit with my schedule far better, since I’m trying to keep up with reading regularly and grammar/vocabulary SRS alongside real life.
I’ve Burned over 1,600 vocabulary terms in WK up to Level 21, and WK has about 6,000 terms total. Honestly, another ~4,500 doesn’t sound insurmountable, but I want to be ready for them without falling into another scenario like this one again.
If I had the time to do 200+ reviews per day, I’d continue on, but this whole “Vacation Mode on/off” thing isn’t doing me any good.
I haven’t decided yet, so I appreciate any arguments for either side.
EDIT (6/26/2024):
After much thought, I decided to reset back to Level 21. Immediately, my Apprentice items dropped to about 115 from over 250. My projected reviews per day is down to about 100, which is still tough for my schedule, but I feel that I want to push through. Even if I have to abuse Vacation Mode a bit more to make it happen, I’m going to get to a point where I can rebuild my old momentum.
I genuinely felt a rush of relief, when I finally did it. The alternative would have taken months. Sacrificing those Burns was tough, but I’d rather make use of WaniKani than not.
