I hit the big red button today – I reset to Level 1 from Level 23 (although I was still in progress with vocab from Level 22, so…)!!! Congratulations!!!
I’m logging this as an accomplishment here because I want to save this morning’s epiphany. I’d been confused about progressing. I was overwhelmed by my 800+ reviews. I was having difficulty giving myself permission to take new lessons, because I saw how the complexity level of the kanji was increasing and I felt the wall approaching. I was unwilling to do a full reset because I’d gotten used to thinking this way: “I’m at level 23 now and I worked hard and learned x number of kanji and vocabs – progress is difficult because of these huge waves of reviews, BUT! I don’t want to reset because I’ll have to relearn a bunch of kanji I already know and resetting won’t save me from this wall of difficulty I encountered here at …Death. xD I’d better continue and let the SRS sort things out.”
WELP> it’s turned out that (thanks to my dear friend Trunklayer’s recommendation to look back over the items in the levels I’ve cleared) looking at my old burned items made me realize that WK is about learning WK radicals to help learn the kanji and I’d forgotten all the radical/mnemonic combinations from early levels! I mean sure, I was learning kanji, but honestly to have gone so slowly that I’d forgotten all the radical names/mnemonics…well, I had the realization that in order to prepare to climb the Death levels the best possible preparation was to polish up my familiarity with all the radicals and kanji up to that point…including the very beginning levels. I mean sure, they were burned (and I was continually shocked at how I was able to remember any kanji whatsoever after months and months (years, I guess) passing by with me doing zero reviews), but I wasn’t actually able to recall most of the radical mnemonics for the early items. So starting from the beginning was absolutely not going to waste my time! In addition, I’m going to try and take the 0/0 route – I’m going to try and take all the lessons as soon as they’re available and do all the reviews as soon as their available. I know there will still be waves that are difficult to deal with, but I have this feeling that if I sort of rush through things there won’t be as many leeches because I won’t be taking extra time between reviews and between new lessons that will make my memory more likely to fail. This SRS was designed for a certain pace, and if I don’t try it at that pace I’m not going to be experiencing the full WK SRS magic at its best.
Furthermore, I’m starting Bunpro now that I am not scared about encountering kanji in the process of learning grammar. I really really needed a systematic approach to grammar, and I’m hoping that Bunpro will do the trick.
Am I wrong about taking this thing full tilt??? Don’t answer that. xD no but really, are there benefits to going full speed ahead?? I really hope there are because I feel so stoked and motivated right now!!! <3
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*they’re. Haha. Hahahahaha. 
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@trunklayer I did the full reset. Thank you for recommending it. 
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Yay, congratulations! 
May the Great Cat of Purrseverance help you reach level 60 this time! 
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Hey, it’s nice to see you back! I’d wondered how things were going for you.
I hope going fast works out, though if you start to get overwhelmed, I recommend trying the new lesson algorithm, because I wish it had existed when I was actively doing lessons! Unfortunately I don’t think rushing is conducive to avoiding leeches (at least, whenever I rush my lessons I tend to have worse recall later on…), but maybe it’ll work out for you and you’ll get there faster than I did with my turtle pace 
.
Good luck!
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Thank you for the warning about rushing lessons and poorer recall, and for the good wishes! 
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Hey thank you for your warning about overwhelm. I just read the entry by famous WK level 60 speedrunner jprspereira and how there were days of 200-300+ reviews per day and I thought, “welp.” xD
Speeding through this will probably burn me out, so I better not do that! 
What is this new lesson algorithm??
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Oh you’re back!!! You can’t believe how much marshmallows I saved up for you!
Seriously, glad to see you back again - they’ve changed things to 15 lessons a day which I think it a good pace to not get overwhelmed. I feel like I’m going in a more better pace now so hopefully you’ll feel the same way too! You’ll get there. 
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Tha pain of waiting for lessons/reviews at the beginning…whow. So frustrating… lol… almost making me regret the full reset, but not quite. Maybe this nostalgia for the more heavy review schedule will stay with me during the big waves…I can hope.
In the meantime, yay for Bunpro! I’m doing 3 lessons per day. A measly 3 per day, but I think that’s probably enough… what I really need is to establish the habits – the rituals!
And I feel pretty sure that getting a reading routine in is key too. Right now I’m using these gigantic Tadoku pdfs (and yes, started from level zero! yay!!!):
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/o7x7ha/2021_updated_free_tadoku_graded_reader_pdfs_1796/
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You can choose “advanced” so you can “pick and mix” vocabulary words and kanji or just to do more lessons if 3 a day isn’t enough but I find 3 a day is going well for me so far for the higher levels. If I see my reviews for a day hits 100+ then I won’t do a lesson so stop over loading myself.
Going on a bit but~
Riya here made me feel motivated with reading so I’ve pushed myself to read manga and some games. I felt excited seeing a kanji I just learnt come up in the text! I now find it a massive joy as I can understand a good amount now not 100% but enough to get what’s going on. I remember once pausing on one manga for about 1-2 months and when I came back to it I found I could read it much better, it was like magic to me!
I think it’s ok to speed up for than 3 lessons if you wanted for the very early lessons as they might feel easy for you ~ I’ll cheer you on! Let’s get you back up to level 23! 
I should go back on bunpro I haven’t been on it for… maybe years.
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Amazing! Yay Riya! So encouraging. What manga have you been reading? That must be an incredible feeling to see the progress happening in real time as you learn.
It looks like 15 lessons at a time is good for now – we’ll see what I do to deal with the situation when the reviews start really flowing, though.
Did you do anything particular for grammar and for developing vocabulary?
Reading is magic. 
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I haven’t yet read the manga, but as anime goes, this one is my favorite!
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I’ve been watching the anime as well which made it more easier for me to read the manga! It’s Puurrrfect for reading practise! 
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Case Closed?? Detective Conan?!?! Awesome! I enjoyed the anime very much, and detective stories are so great for keeping me hooked on reading. 
Thank you for the great recommendation!
Honestly, I’m sure you’re right that you over-practiced hiragana but…I’m a little jealous! 
I’ve already forgotten how to write, so, clearly, I under-practiced my kana.
I want to begin reading something right away, but my vocabulary and general knowledge is so lacking…wait. You know what? That’s just exactly the mindset that’s holding me back! From what you’re saying, I should just dive in and read as much as I can right away! Thank you! I will try it!
Good for you for getting lessons. That’s wonderful!
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Yeah! I think you introduced me to this one! Really a sweet anime!
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Progress report: I’ve been doing WK and Bunpro lessons and reviews each day, with a day off from lessons on Thursday. I know it’s not as efficient to take a day off from lessons each week, but I am concerned about burning out… hmm… well, hopefully I’ll get into a routine. I’m so worried about the wall o’ reviews that will be coming soon… 
@FireFairy …thank you for saving all those marshmallows for me.
As for reading, I’m still reading Tadoku Level 0 and loving it. Heh…I’m hoping I’ll magically learn without even feeling it… 
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I think it’s advance but I love being able to read most of it! I love detective stories so it makes me motivated to keep reading! Sounds like we need our own Case Close manga book thread (unless someone has already done that already!).
It’s useful to watch the anime first before reading so you’re not completely lost. I prefer to just read and not worry about it, just checking the odd word or grammar which keeps popping up and really confusing me - my method is that as if I keep checking every single word I soon get demotivated and lose interest as I want most of the time spent reading not searching. Everyone’s different but for me this works. 
I’m a bit obsessed writing - I’m actually on my 3rd kanji book as I’m writing out every single new kanji I learn. Many years ago I went through Remembering the kanji and I wrote every single kanji down, it was crazy but I still remember how quite a lot of kanji looks like (though I didn’t remember the readings!).
I think you’re doing the right thing reading Tadoku level - as long as you’re reading something even a few words it’s something! To me there’s no waste, it all stores away somewhere in your memory. There’s a lot I didn’t think I learnt and had been surprised that it was stored away in my memory!
Also don’t worry about having a day off, I do this sometimes and it helps to not overload my brain. We do want to rush to level 60 but I think it’s faster to do what we can when we’re ready. At one point I was trying to do a lot of lessons everyday and it ended up making me feel stressed out and more so seeing my reviews for the day piling up like crazy. Stress = worse memory = more mistakes for me!
I typed a lot sorry! Hope the marshmallows help to keep you going! 
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