I’ve seen so many similar posts, and yet I never thought this would happen to me… but it did.
After about 2 months of inactivity during which I forgot or kept postponing the idea of activating vacation mode, I now sit on L26 in front of 2113 reviews and 83 lessons. It is scaring the living daylights out of me, but I will try my best to overcome this huge mess.
I don’t regret pausing WK for the time I did, because it was an important break for me. I guess I should’ve taken the vacation mode more seriously and actually used it, but if I ever go through the same event again, from now on I’ll know best.
Unfortunately, my momentum was left behind and my motivation is not as strong anymore (I’m afraid my accuracy will drop tremendously…), although I do not intend to give up just yet! If anyone has specific tips for getting back on track, I’m all ears; I’ll follow the common sense of not doing all of them at once, until whenever I can see some signs of hope down the road.
you have 2 main choices: do your reviews or reset.
do your reviews: lots of posts of people getting over a mountain of reviews. possible no doubt.
reset: you can reset completely. i reset to 1 and never once regretted it. you can also reset a few levels, until your pile has decreased to something you feel you can handle, esp apprentice items from the levels in the 20’s
I will try going through them for a few days before considering a reset. That, because maybe it won’t be as bad as I fear (I hope so at least), and who knows, maybe I will surprise myself with how much I actually remember. If my accuracy keeps dropping or not seeming to increase at all after, say, a week or two, I might consider some degree of resetting.
That’s what I did. I initially went for a month or so just trying to power through before I had to give up and partially reset. After resetting from 60 to 46, things started going much better, although the trek up the mountain is still very slow.
I’m glad to hear things are going better on your end!
I think my situation is not as critical (you were on L60 after all, lots of more advanced items that I imagine can be a pain…), but if I’m proven wrong I won’t restrain from resetting a few levels. It gives me peace of mind to have subscribed for lifetime.
I just finished one trial session of 360 items with an overall accuracy of 68%. Lots of items (141) were burned and I assume more would have followed suit if I had kept going. Although the bulk of it was from earlier levels, many of the failed items had me facepalming or thinking “ohhh, of course! …”, which I guess is a good sign.
I’ll see how it goes over the next days!
After 2 weeks of reviewing, my queue is down from ~2100 to zero () and I currently have only 60 Apprentice items (from which 50 are Apprentice 4). I was glad to realize that many items were still surprisingly fresh in my memory. At some point during this time, I leveled up to L27 after god knows how long. I also took the time to resume my grammar studies and I’m getting close to wrapping up Genki 1.
Small victories, but still victories.
Anyway, even after leveling up, I did not tackle any new lessons (~170 in queue). The reason being: I have currently 1100+ Guru items (2/3 ratio of Guru 1 / Guru 2) that haven’t had time yet to go into Master (or back to Apprentice…) from all the recent cramming.
If anyone is up to some advising, would you say I’m good to go on into new territory, or should I wait even more and try to reduce the number of Guru buddies? Should I even pay any attention to the Guru number?
That’s why it’s so important to never get out of the habit once it’s established, doesn’t matter if it’s christmas. You have 30min. You can break a habit really quickly, giving you a ton of suffering for nothing in return, it’s not worth it, not even to skip a day.
I respectfully disagree. It was a very meaningful and special occasion for me, and I would do it again if I had to.
I paused learning kanji because I could finally travel to see family after 2 years apart, so for me, it was a lot in return and much worth it. Besides, I don’t think I had a “ton of suffering” to get back on track.
I think it’s about priorities… A time came when some other things became more important than learning kanji in my life at the moment. I just maybe shouldn’t have overlooked the option of vacation mode on WK, but now I feel excited and ready to get back to it! (=
First - Congrats!! You made it through a ton of reviews - awesome job!!
My advice here is that you likely do want to whittle those Guru reviews down a bit - that 1100+ reviews that you will see in the next 2 weeks - and any ones you fail you’ll see more than that.
Routinely, I don’t love having more than about 600 (I’ve seen 500 suggested, but usually sit around 550 - definitely depends on your tolerance) - it’s a lot when combined with apprentice items and things coming up to go to Enlightened/Burned.
I would probably just do my reviews over the next 1-2 weeks or so and see how the number of apprentice and guru shake out - if you’re passing most of the guru items up to Guru 2 or master, then more lessons might be in order, but if a fair number are bouncing down to apprentice, I would avoid new lessons a bit longer to keep things under control.
Obviously YMMV - kind of depends on the number of reviews you like to do per day etc.
Yeah… man, I feel for you. I just smashed out 700 reviews in one day because I didn’t do my lessons for lvl 50, so I ended up doing 50 and 51 on the same day, then… it all collided into a big pile of pissed off turtles…
Perhaps this is the best thing I can post: This is what NOT to do … in your case… and in others, it might be a good idea to hit that vakay button huh?
I don’t know how people manage these crazy review backlogs… well done. Whenever I’ve been camping or something, or needed time off for one reason or another, vacation mode has been my friend.
I will follow the advice of holding on new lessons for some more days.
I think the upcoming week will be when many Guru 2 —> Master reviews will take place (and hopefully not fail). Right now, it’s down to 50 in Apprentice. I’ll keep an eye on the numbers.
I was always impressed about how people managed large sums of reviews as well, but I think I was lucky to go through that at a mid/earlier point in WK rather than around the later levels.
It was a fun comeback and from now on I’ll definitely not forget about vacation mode
I fortunately did not have a lot of failed items going back to Apprentice (overall accuracy of 90% over the last couple weeks or so!), and my leech count reduced drastically (hundreds of times lol).
With this in mind, I decided to go on with new material and now consider my initial backlog fully overcome!
I am currently almost into L28 and with 100 Apprentice and 700 Guru steadily going down.
Surprisingly, L27 has been a breeze, with not many kanji or vocabulary giving me issues whatsoever.
Thanks everyone for the support and advice. I guess this event taught me how wonderful our memory can be, since I got over a huge-ish backlog over just a few weeks with no major problems at all. (Maybe I’m lucky…)
Now 100% back at my original pace and eager to keep going. Very soon into even newer territories.
), although I do not intend to give up just yet! If anyone has specific tips for getting back on track, I’m all ears; I’ll follow the common sense of not doing all of them at once, until whenever I can see some signs of hope down the road. 
and I assume more would have followed suit if I had kept going. Although the bulk of it was from earlier levels, many of the failed items had me facepalming or thinking “ohhh, of course! …”, which I guess is a good sign.
) and I currently have only 60 Apprentice items (from which 50 are Apprentice 4). I was glad to realize that many items were still surprisingly fresh in my memory. At some point during this time, I leveled up to L27 after god knows how long. I also took the time to resume my grammar studies and I’m getting close to wrapping up Genki 1.
