After the default "1m 10m" learning steps, Anki sends my cards out to something like 10d. I feel like I won't remember a brand new word in 10 days. Am I doing something wrong?

This new algorithm seems crazy. A few years ago I used Anki to learn Chinese characters and I had custom learning steps spanning several days. It was always hard but I had great results. Now I want to learn a new language with Anki's new algorithm and these intervals are scaring me. Is this really going to work. I mean I add brand new vocab, see it twice in the same session and then not again for over a week? Is this how it's supposed to work?