a.k.a. V.J.

I have a usage streak on the Duolingo app that’s coming up on two years. That is not a brag, but rather a confession — maybe even a cry for help. The truth is, I’d like to quit the damn thing and be done with it, but the psychologically manipulative gamification of the app has gotten inside my head and I can’t bring myself to snap the streak. That little green owl has me doing his bidding.

I downloaded Duolingo back in 2018 in an attempt to pick up a smattering of French prior to a family trip to Paris. I played around with it a little bit, didn’t learn much, and then promptly forgot about it.

Then, in the summer of 2021, I started reading Stoic philosophy from writers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Spending time with the translated works of those Roman thinkers led me to decide I wanted to learn a little Latin. I pulled the long-dormant Duolingo app up on my phone and proceeded to tear through the first level of its Latin course. For whatever reason, I was more disciplined with the Latin than I had been with French, and the app became a daily habit.

After a few weeks, I began to hit a wall with Latin. The freeform word order kept tripping me up and frustrating me. I might well have stopped using the app at that point, and I kind of wish that I had. Instead, I decided to switch gears and do a little refresher course in German. I took German in high school and was just one course shy of minoring in it in college, so the initial lessons were pretty easy for me. I decided to see how far I could get before I hit the same kind of wall I did with Latin. One thing led to another, the constant app reminders wore me down any time I thought about slacking off, and pretty soon I had a streak that seemed worthy of maintaining.

Weeks of usage turned into months. I told myself that I’d quit after I hit a year. Nope. Then my plan was to retire after 500 days. Now, I’m 636 days in and saying to myself, “Well, if I’m this close two full years, I should at least make it to that milestone…”

It bothers me a little that I’m pressing on with this because of some quasi-OCD desire to maintain a streak, as opposed to a love of learning. I’d like to just let it go, but it only takes a few minutes each day to do enough to maintain the streak, so I always cave and bang out one more lesson, often around 11:30 p.m.

Someday, I’ll say enough is enough and put an end to this meaningless hamster-wheel exercise. But as of this writing, I remain in thrall to the owl.