Mediocrity Amidst

The IHC serves as a path to attaining Mastery not just in our martial arts, but in our day to day lives. We talk about it frequently; taking the habits we build and the lifestyle we create around the IHC and applying it to other aspects of our lives. In fact, I think many of our personal goals end up reflecting this. With that said, I have been very mindful of my pursuit of Mastery in my schoolwork this last year. Or at the very least, working to remove mediocrity. Now, I am struggling.

To start, I do not have a good record as a student. In highschool, I was defined as a “nightmare student”. Smart enough (and lazy enough) to just get by without having to put in any effort. One of my grade 12 teachers actually made a bet with one of my grade 11 teachers that I wouldn’t graduate, fun fact (jokes on him, I had effectively graduated at the age of 16 and before he had even made the bet, but that's beside the point). Long story short, even I recognized this would have to turn around in college.

And overall, I have done well. Made the Dean's List, got some scholarships, yada yada yada. I have been working on purging the mediocrity out of my academic life, and I have been doing well. Which brings me to the present day; I am less than a month away from finishing my bachelors in applied science, and mediocrity is everywhere.

There are two big factors that are working hand-in-hand to contribute to this, I believe. The first is that I am doing well (ironic, huh?). Right now, my current grades are all in the low-mid 90s. Because of this, I have assignments still due in about half of my classes that I could simply not submit and I would still pass with grades above the average. On that same note, I have a few classes where the majority of the grade is still to be determined. My natural instinct is to abandon the classes I have already effectively passed and focus on those which I can still fail and, although I think many of us agree is a logical decision, it is inciting me to drop the ball. 

The second factor is that I am simply done with it. I have been enrolled and partaking in academics since September 2022, which is nearly 15 months of straight school. I have written approximately 85k words since the spring in academic material (for reference, that is the length of the first Harry Potter novel) and I have at least another 30k to go in less than a month. I am sick of it. Some people can do it, sure. But not me. There's always a weight on my shoulders, always something stressing me out. As such, my motivation is completely extinguished. “But Simon, you’re almost there, just keep pushing, one more final sprint!”. I know, I know. The only problem is, I used my final sprint back in September and now I am just flat out exhausted. Good thing I didn’t choose to become a doctor, huh?

Fortunately, my work offers me lots of opportunities to work on my papers. This means I can still attend Kung Fu every night without the guilt that I should be doing more. And to be honest, Kung Fu is currently the only thing keeping me going and refreshed, so I do not believe it wise to cut out my mat time. 

At this time, I do not have a plan to immediately combat this mediocrity. Or rather, my current plan is to not combat it. I recognize this is a defeatist attitude, but I do not believe I have the time, energy, nor motivation to effectively revamp my routine. As such, I am allocating and focusing my energy on simply getting through, rather than spending it trying to find ways to improve that could end up leaving me energy-less and ultimately unable to get by at all. 

I do have a plan to ultimately combat this mediocrity, however. I call it the “regroup and recuperate” method; once I have gotten through this, instead of just rejoicing in the fact that I have gotten through it and never giving it a second thought, I will take the opportunity to reflect and refocus myself. From here, I believe I can most effectively locate the weak spots in how I conducted myself and generate a plan to work around these weak zones in the future. It may not be a direct path to Mastery, but I believe it is the best path I can afford to take.