megane-kun

I changed schools. Now, even if I wanted to approach her, I can’t!

Kidding aside, I asked myself “if I am so anxious even approaching her, how can I even be in a relationship with her?” and basically forced myself to decide whether to: “yeah, this is a crush that I won’t be doing anything about it, better to not let it linger and move on” or “I must do something about the anxiety.”

If my feelings is not intense enough for the second option, the feelings will die soon enough, and will not make me regret that much.

In reality, I tend to think “no, they’re more than likely not into me (due to various reasons)”, and I’ll just let the feelings be until they decay. Did it lead to regrets? Not really. The few times I’ve actually asked and approached someone I had a crush on, they were flattered, but ultimately told me they’re not into me. The more it happened, the more I felt justified in my way of thinking.

I know right? Kids don’t need any reason to carve penises onto desks and tables and walls. They just do.

One of the older toilets used in a couple of the old school buildings (demolished for a newer one after I graduated) was permanently closed because it became so full of shit.

It was a toilet on a separate building, that was used for a couple of old buildings (one from the 1930’s if the local oral history is to be believed), and another one from the 1970’s. The stench was so unberable that the classrooms near it were also abandoned.

Oh, the school wasn’t infamous for that. I think, pushing shit aside, it’s so wonderfully mediocre that it didn’t really have anything it was famous or infamous for.

I use Anki to keep my French and Japanese from deteriorating any further. Why those langauges? For Japanese, it’s the usual answer: anime and manga. For French, I had to learn it in school and I just don’t want to let it be forgotten.

A good number of the decks I use for language learning, I made for myself. Those that I’ve gotten from AnkiWeb were already gone, but here’s some similar ones:

• French Sentences — a collection of French sentences, sorted from easiest (most simple) to hardest (most complex). This deck begins with very simple sentences, and slowly gets harder as you progress.

  I’m pretty sure this is an exact, if not a close copy of the one I got a while back.

• Dictionary of Japanese Grammar - DoJG — a deck made from the entries of “Dictionary of Japanese Grammar” (basic to advanced).

  My copy of this deck has undergone significant changes in card design (and function, like showing a random selection of the example sentences), but this one should be similar.

• Core 2k/6k Japanese Vocab — likely one of the copies of the various Core 2/6k Japanese Vocabulary decks that were recommended to me back when I started. The description I managed to find for my copy of the deck has this description:

  Using vocabulary and sentences derived from Smart.FM Core 2k and 6k and sorted by Cangy’s program via 2001.Kanji.Odyssey kanji order. This detailed deck is designed so each new card contains the minimum amount of new kanji (and by proxy new words) creating an optimal i+1 learning environment.

Heck, I’d probably be a repeat customer and have them help me rice my Linux install.

Who’s got time for sex when there’s ricing to be done!

Anki was a part of my language learning routine, but now, it has become my language learning routine. It’s not ideal, nor do I like it, but as I’ve decided to temporarily stop my language learning, I continued doing Anki in hopes that whatever I’ve learned continue to stick, and not be forgotten.

Now, with that out of the way, I want to describe how I actually used and continue to use Anki.

I’ve been keeping up a streak that has gone unbroken since 2020. Before that, I’ve got a good streak going on in 2019, but felt too burnt out I had to stop. The highest number of reviews I had to make was just under a thousand. Some Anki users might think it’s rookie numbers, but that’s really a bit too much for me especially as I’ve only got like an hour devoted to Anki-related stuff.

The way I do it, I only have one review session (though this review session might be scattered throughout the day). I go through each of my decks, review them, and then move to another deck. Sometimes, I add new cards to the review queue when the reviews for that deck go below a certain threshold. For some decks, it’s zero, but for some others, it’s some value I’ve come up via trial and error. More about this later.

Anyways, there is really a learning curve to using it, but I think the biggest issue people face in trying to use Anki is pacing.

One problem I faced quite early on is just the number of reviews I have to do everyday rising up. Even just adding one new card to the review queue every day would quickly add up, and adds up at a faster rate if you’ve got lots of decks. So at some point, I was reviewing well over 500 cards in a day, and I was close to burning out. Then I decided to just stop adding new cards to the review queue, and just let the review pile get lower and lower. It got to the point where I was reviewing only a card or two per deck in a day, at which point, I shouldn’t bother, right?

So, I came up with a way to try to keep my reviews at a healthy number: by varying the number of new cards I add to the review queue. For some decks, it’s a simple threshold (e.g.: if reviews < 32, add a new card), for others, it’s multiple thresholds e.g.:

if reviews < 8, add 1 new card;
else, if reviews < 4  add 2 new cards;
else, if reviews < 2, add 3 new cards;
else, if reviews < 1, add 4 new cards

Currently, I’m averaging just above 120 cards for all my decks per day, which is an amount I’m okay with.

Some people might disagree with me and think my way is inefficient, but I think it’s really all about finding your own way to use Anki the way that best fits your situation. I am not a medical student and I don’t need to study for exams (I currently have no plans of taking language certification exams, like the JLPT or the DELF), so I don’t really need to cram. Furthermore, I am in no rush, so slow and inefficient might just be okay with me.

If your method allows you to study consistently, I think it’s fine.