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What is mediocrity? Webster’s Dictionary defines it as, “of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance.” Learners have encountered many kinds of mediocrity throughout their lives. For example, medical errors, banking errors, and other errors have had a negative effect on learners’ lives. Learners don’t like to be the object of mediocrity.

Soren Kierkegaard (SK for now on), a Danish philosopher, abhorred the mediocrity of his time. During SK’s time, the Danish church lost its passion to live out its religious convictions. Instead, the church became cold, disconnected, and waned in its relevance among the people. In contrast, SK generated a prodigious amount of works to challenge the church to return to its religious convictions; SK didn’t recant in efforts to fight against the mediocrity of the church, despite persecution from it. As a result, scholars can engage the fruit of SK’s contribution to religion, ethics, and psychology.

Although SK fought against religious mediocrity, learners can fight against a different type of mediocrity: academic mediocrity. Academic mediocrity is exhibited when learners put half their effort into a course and expect to receive an A. (This doesn’t apply to learners who submit their best work and receive lower grades than they had anticipated.)  Instead, academic mediocrity applies to learners who possess the academic skills to be successful, but they don’t correct errors in grammar before they post, they ignore an instructor’s feedback, they submit papers with incorrect citations, they don’t care about assignment deadlines, and they abjure from becoming scholars of the literature in their fields.

SK provides three lessons to help learners fight against academic mediocrity. First, SK recognized that fighting against mediocrity is a life long battle. Likewise, learners need to approach each day, each course, and each instructor with the goal to eliminate academic mediocrity. Second, SK knew it would cost him to fight against mediocrity. Similarly, fighting against mediocrity may cost learners time, patience, and possibly their reputation. Third, SK’s commitment to quality led to him to becoming known for his life, works, and thought throughout the world. Learners who fight against academic mediocrity will be rewarded with becoming more skilful scholar-practitioners, gaining more knowledge of the literature in their field, and entering their academic fields with confidence. So, don’t be mediocre about mediocrity. How can you eliminate mediocrity from your academic journey?