Skritter asks me to write "student" so I do so. I press next and it asks the same word again, but it wants "life" as answer this time. Whats going on?

Another question, is skritter useful for someone who doesnt know any japanese at all?

I study Chinese, not Japanese, so take my reply with a grain of salt. First, from what I've heard Japanese words are often written identically but have multiple pronunciations and definitions, thus writing the word twice in a row with different definitions. Second, in my opinion Skritter is not useful if you don't know Chinese/Japanese at all and aren't taking a course or engaging in some other type of instruction. Skritter will teach you the characters, it will not teach you how to speak or the grammar.

Third, are you trolling? If not, a very strange pick for your avatar.

Thanks for answer and to answer your question, no I'm not trolling. I just forgot to chance my avatar before posting.

I believe you were studying a two character word, 学生. So it was asking for the first character, then the second one (where the second character generally means 'life'). The prompt shows both the word it wants (学生) and more detailed information on the individual characters (学 and 生).

Skritter is a tool for helping you learn your characters and vocabulary, but it really works best with a class or textbook, or if you've already learned the basics about Japanese (particularly hiragana and katakana) so you can learn a lot more characters and vocab.

Your current avatar makes me want to play Oblivion again.

That explains a lot, thank you very much.