Much to the detriment of my linguistic aspirations, I admit to getting sucked up into the competitive XP rat race of Duolingo. My general learning and absorption of knowledge took a hit as I wanted to farm XP as fast and as much as I could so that I could dominate my opponents on the weekly league’s leaderboards, and win, basically nothing for succeeding. And over the last few weeks, I found myself in a position to where I was finishing in the top-3 every single week, if not winning outright.
After cruising to an easy win in the Obsidian League, the penultimate rank before Diamond, I knew that things were going to be different once I were Diamond, and that I shouldn’t assume I’d be able to get a #1 ranking, not without some genuine effort. But after one week in Diamond, I’ve come to realize that at this stage of my Duolingo journey, it’s probably not worth competing, unless I happen to be placed into a vastly less competitive user pool, because after a week of actually trying to keep up, I just don’t have the time to commit as the users who bettered me.
The shown graph is my last three weeks, and although it’s not up-to-date, my first week of Diamond was actually my new career-high as far as XP accumulation went. Whereas my prior two weeks, I notched some 1st place finishes with less XP, once in Diamond, I’ve been shown the realization of just how different of a game it is here.
It really is a blessing in disguise though, because I’ve decided to not try to really compete, unless I see an opportunity. The good thing is that it never takes long to realize when I’m in a real tryhard group, because like the time I’m writing this, I hadn’t even started for the week, and I was already down 3,000 XP to first place; at my very best, spamming boosts and using gems to extend them, I think I’ve at the most cleared 2,400 XP in a single day.
Furthermore, I’ve noticed how many people who are the mega-tryhards are utilizing multiple courses, and I get the impression that people are doing this in order to farm XP, because I could just as easily start English and cruise through basic curriculum in order to just boost my numbers. I’d wager that there are more people like that, than some real polyglots tryharding just to beat others in a meaningless contest.
It will be liberating and probably beneficial to my learning aspirations to take my foot off the XP farming gas, and actually focusing on the content and trying my best to learn and comprehend alternatively. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still love to win Diamond league one of these days, but I’m already strapped for time as it is, and it’s already sometimes more effort and time sacrifice than I want to make in order to get my generally 45 minutes of lessons in, and I’m already making more mistakes than ever, due to how much I’ve rushed through the curriculum in the last three weeks or so.
My day in the Diamond sun will eventually come, but for now, I’m glad to have quickly learned just how overly-competitive things are at this level, and I’ll bide my time more constructively and take a little more time to learn mi español a little more carefully until it’s go-time.
