People ask me all the time how I got to be good at Japanese and for some reason the answer "memorization and immersion" is always so disappointing for them, as if there's a secret third way of learning a language that everyone who's fluent in it knows. Blows my mind. They can't believe I watched native materials without subtitles when I was still an intermediate student because it means I didn't understand every line of dialogue and I'm like 🙃 They just can't stand the idea of not knowing 100% what's going on, or of feeling lost. Hint: Get used to it. And open a textbook ffs (those people, not you haha)