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Staying awake in class and cheating on SRS

#1
I know the title is kinda weird, I could not come up with anything that is both concise and fitting. Anyway, I am in my third year of college, and during my second year I noticed that paying attention in class (and staying awake) was becoming increasingly harder. That was before I discovered RtK and I was trying to learn kanji by conventional methods at the time, so I doodled various kanji on my notebook margins during classes. That helped me stay awake, but did nothing to help me pay attention.
During the summer break I started doing RtK, and when the new semester started I got a brilliant idea - instead of just doodling kanji I could listen carefully to what the lecturers say and write down a kanji every time I hear them utter a Heisig keyword that I already know the kanji for (later I decided to limit each kanji to once per lecture, because this tends to get quite repetitive eventually). That way I could kill two birds with one stone - practise my kanji and pay attention in class. Of course, the latter was my priority, but I found the method quite useful for the former, like when I recognise a keyword, but fail to recall the story, so I take a note of it and try to adjust the story.
The thing that has been bothering me recently is whether or not this constitutes "cheating" on the SRS method. Does this exercise help or hinder my memorisation of the kanji the SRS way? How problematic could this be in the future? I am new to the whole SRS thing, so expert opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.
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#2
"Expert opinions", heh. Woo! I'm an expert!

Anyway, no, it's not. Otherwise every person here who actually reads/interact with native media in addition to SRSing is cheating.

Well. Maybe it is cheating and we're all just a bunch of cheaters. You're in good company either way I suppose. Or... at least... similar company.
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#3
As long as you're careful to not let SRS know that you're doing a little studying on the side, she shouldn't get mad at you.
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#4
Well, I know what you mean. I've read in these forums that for the most effective long-term storage of the SRS data one had better follow the SRS scheme, and not do 'cheating' reps in between. However, so long as long-term storage isn't your focus, but rather the learning of a language, and you're continuing to use and practice it, I'd say that's perfectly all right and even the way we learn most languages.
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#5
If getting exposure to something you're learning outside of srs is cheating, then you'd never be allowed to actually use the language. Perhaps SRS intervals are set to ensure maximum retention for minimum study, and therefore logically all your study should be in the SRS. But after 10 years of doing that, what exactly will you have accomplished? You will probably remember 95% of a vast array of facts and not be able to smoothly read even basic material. To say nothing of speaking skills, etc.

The way i see it, SRS is about putting a floor on how frequently things are studied. It's there to ensure everything at least gets a minimum level of exposure. The SRS algorithm may think the last time you saw something was a week ago, and so schedules the next rep for 2 weeks, when in fact you saw it 5 minutes ago in a book you're reading, and so 2 weeks is far too long. You know what? It doesn't matter. If you indeed don't see it again for those 2 weeks and fail it on its next review, what exactly is the problem? Was it essential that you have 100% retention over those 2 weeks?

SRS in practice is a statistical method. It's not about retaining everything. It's not about maximising intervals between reviews. It's about ensuring you do review everything regularly enough to not forget more than a small percentage of it, while not forcing you to over-review stuff that you thoroughly know.
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#6
Yeah, the SRS is just a tool that puts your cards in the order that it thinks is best for you to review. It assumes that you do no review outside of it. However, let's say you are taking a test on the material in your SRS. Wouldn't you want to be 100% on your answers rather than a mere "good"? I think the SRS, for me at least, only gives me that level of "good" and only with the items that I study or encounter outside the SRS do I really know something. So I would suggest that "cheating" is essential and that we shouldn't call it cheating, but "extra practice"

So in short, please, do as much extra practice as you can.
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