Hello, I'm a incoming freshman in college, and during my senior year in highschool I started using RTK, although about halfway through school, I realized that I wouldn't be able to do Kanji and Schoolwork at the same time, so I took a break. Now, I'm done with school and I want to get back on track, but I'm stuck with a massive 380 reviews to do. Has anyone here took a long break like this, and if they did, how did they get back into the groove? I would like to finish the book before starting college if possible. Thanks.

I've "started over" twice. The original RtK run took forever and got me to 1100. The first restart I got to 1100 in about a week after a half a year absence. From there I eventually reached the end. The second restart was after a four month absence, and I got to 2200 in about 1.5 weeks.

If anything this tells me doing RtK leaves a definite mark on long-term memory, even if it does take a little bit to get back to the 90%-ish correct review range. So, you may consider starting over and getting back to 380 as quick as possible. As for me, I used to do 400 reviews a day, and sometimes I still do... though spending the amount of hours doing so can get disheartening quickly, clearing 380 one time should be very doable.

I had a 1,300+ pile up twice that I had to face. It took me about 3 weeks both times to finally clear it away, (the problem is that many of the cards go straight back into the failed pile since the retention rate sinks so low) but you shouldn't have much of a problem getting 380 reviews cleared quickly. Just hack away at it--making sure to do story maintenance if needed since stories are very important--til the daily reps are manageable again, then start adding new cards. It shouldn't be that scary! Good luck.

Usually I'd recommend a fresh start, as in re-adding the deck without scheduling information. Sadly, I don't actually know how to do that in anki 2... But in your case, I think you can power through that stack. I actually laughed at the "massive 380 reviews" thing because me and I'm sure many others here do at least that amount daily. Just go though the cards quickly and fail them if you forgot. You'll probably fail most, but there might be a few that you remember. Try to recall your old stories while you're working on the failed stack, but if they don't stick, make a new one. Another tip would be to browse over the radicals for the first 380 cards because I find radicals are easy to forget if you're not reviewing, and that's a real problem.

btw I know where you're at because I finished in 08 but had to redo it last fall. My words of wisdom: aim for consistency with your efforts. 20 cards a day beats 100 cards once a week. Good luck.

Cool, thanks for the encouragement. Yeah, I never was the best at doing my kanji daily, I kept on getting distracted by other things. (ADD problems) Though, I'm going to try and do 5-10 reviews every hour or two.

Oh, btw: I'm actually done about 500 cards, I just have 380 reviews.

This might sound obvious but as long as your doing more reviews each day then you will have due the next day you will catch up eventually. As Haych points out, consistency is rather important, even if it's just 10 minutes each day.

Oh yeah, if your using Anki 2, there is a load balancer plugin that will smooth out your review scheduling, so they don't all spike on the same day.