For over 300 days in a row, I have faithfully been doing my Duolingo (Spanish) lessons.  I have learned a butt load of Spanish.  Not enough to actually understand Spanish conversation (mas despacio, por favor) but I feel like I’m making some inroads.

For most of these 300+ days I have done 4 lessons a day.  Three lessons were reviews – Duolingo would choose from the lessons I have completed three of the lessons and indicate they needed to be “restored” – which meant complete a refresher lesson for that category.  And then I would work on a lesson from the current category I was working on. 

Now my big complaint about Duolingo was they seldom offered explanations about why things are the way they are in the Spanish language. 

But then Duolingo started adding some helpful explanations when you fucked up an answer. 

Cool beans.  That helped.  Not a lot, because often Duolingo would offer me an explanation on something in the answer that was not what I had fucked up. 

Then Duolingo lost its fucking mind.

Recently, Duolingo added a bunch of new categories – each one meant to help you learn the why and wherefor for things like conjugating and gender agreement and the two kinds of “to be”, etc.  And 7 of those new categories fall into the lesson sections I have already completed.

You know it’s going to drive me up a wall to have uncompleted lessons in the middle of my completed lessons.  I NEED to get those new lessons completed.

So now, every day, I do 7 (yes SEVEN) of the new lessons that fall into the completed sections; 1 (Duolingo had pity and took the number of lessons to be restored each day down to one), plus my new lesson. 

I am doing 9 lessons each day. 

Yes, these new lessons are exactly what I needed from Duolingo – BACK WHEN I WAS DOING THE ORIGINAL LESSONS!

And okay, I am learning a lot just by knowing the explanation behind the weirdness I’ve run into.  And I am even learning a lot on things that I thought I had figured out.  And I am benefitting from the extra practice on problem areas that were problem areas because I didn’t understand why it was supposed to be that way.

BUT 9 LESSONS A DAY?

Have a little mercy Duolingo!

Okay, I know it’s not Duolingo’s fault that they hadn’t gotten their shit sufficiently together at the time I started the program; and I know it’s only my own completist compulsion that is making me do so many lessons each day …

Shit. 

I hate when I get what I want and I hate it even more when I can’t blame somebody else for the problems that arise in my life because I got what I want.

I repeat.  Shit.