Anki setup best practices?

If you think the Easy button sends cards too far into the future, you can go into the deck settings, and change the Easy Interval to <4.

You may also want to consider turning on FSRS in the same settings, to make Anki learn the optimal interval for a given retention probability you want to hit.

I don't know what add-ons you may have been using in high school. It would make sense though that you would find it easier to memorize stuff, especially languages, when you were younger though. So maybe that's a confounder here.

I never use easy/hard, only correct/incorrect. To see cards more often, you can tune the interval factor. You can also change the new card steps to show new cards multiple times on the first day.

I can't find the source right now, but there is a good article on this that also goes into the tradeoff of recall vs. number of reviews. 95% recall is too high. 70% too low. 85% is the sweet spot iirc.

Keep in mind that Easy has two very different effects depending on whether the card is "new" or in "review". For review cards, Easy is just a multiplier on the duration/difficulty. For new cards, Easy immediately ends the learning period, and converts the card to a "review" card.

For language learning specifically, I've seen people recommend specifying a longer set of new card steps, which serves to keep them in learning mode longer before switching to review mode, and gives you a little more control over that process. If you're doing that, you'll definitely want to avoid pressing the Easy button for any cards still in learning mode.