Drowning in New Words

This week marked the finish of one month of Japanese classes. In the past month I've learned close to 500 new words, at least 40 grammar patterns, and probably close to 200 kanji. The only problem is being able to actually retain all of this new information. I've been exposed to so much so quickly that I'm lucky if I remember 200 of those words. I probably only am really comfortable and remember about 10 or so of the grammar patterns. I have been surprised by my kanji retention though. Even if I can't write all of the new ones I've learned I can usually recognize them when reading and I know the correct pronounciation. Hopefully as time goes along it will be easy to retain all these new words. The pace at which I'm learning these new words will probably start to slow down soon as my vocabulary builds up so that should help a little bit. Gotta study more! Focus!