Now that I see the question, you're probably a senior in HS with 2 years of "doing just enough" to pass the semesters.
You now have a couple problems . . .
a 70% C- average (using your example in the original post) limits your options for tertiary education. Colleges that matter tend to have a higher GPA requirement.
Every college has a minimum GPA requirement for scholarships and grants.
This one is the biggie:
3) You now have no study habits.
Points 1 & 2 can be worked around in various ways. I mean it's money, and everyone wants your money. Even if you don't like them, there are options.
Point 3 is something I bet nobody has articulated. Doing your homework and classwork with makeup opportunity (in middleschool), leads to being responsible with homework (without makeup) in HS, leads to self-starting study habits and responsibility in college, leads to responsibility and work ethic in the workplace. One thing leads to another.
I right now have 5 kids... 25, 23, 16, ~14, 11. I have explained to them all that middle school is about homework. Do your homework and you'll get good grades. Fuck off the homework, and you'll have a chance to make it up.
In HS, teachers make a point to tell you what the homework is and will generally be lenient about it with people that are trying to get it done. You've blown it off, consistently getting zeros for missed assignments, so you've likely gotten no such lenience.
In University, the assignments will typically be made early on or almost completely separated from classtime and you'll be expected to not only do it on your own, but make queries on your own time.
In the workplace, much of the time you'll be expected to see what needs to be done and do it/complete it without someone telling you what to do. If you're able to do this, you get raises and promotions. If you're just a cog in the machine that gets just enough done on a regular basis, you get nothing. If someone needs to regularly follow up on you or tell you the basics of how to do the job they hired you to know and understand, you'll stay right where you are. Maybe.
The Lesson: By making it your mission to do only what needs to be done, and stopping there, you've made a habit and built a work mentality where distraction and unfocus have a lot of power.
But I've completed a lot of [not what I was tasked with]
Doesn't matter. It's not what you were asked to do which requires energy and focus. Going off and doing "something else", even if you completed the "something else" to satisfaction, is nothing more than being off-task.
Dude it's ok. I'll just deal with that as I need to.
It's not that easy. Creating a new habit is difficult enough. My 16 yo is doing the same thing right now. After fucking off her homework 6-9th grade, she's now on a path to not graduate and is very lost on how to organize her life while her friends are coping, with more facets, without a problem. Here, we're talking about you trying to create a new habit to prioritize something tedious over the carcasses of the crack-like effect of doing something you really enjoy doing... which is "something else".
Ask anyone that's tried to stop an addiction how hard it is.
Last thing.
I'm not here to prove you wrong, or gang up on you, or tell you "do what your parents/teachers told you to do". You are your own person, absolutely.
However, you have spent more energy trying to be right than you you have trying to understand what's best.
IOW Rather than accepting that your parents are trying to impart some wisdom, you have camped out at the opinion that you are right.
Nobody cares who's right here because it's not about being right... it's about helping you prepare yourself for the real world.
Even if you don't believe for a moment that adults in your world have your best interest at heart, all opinions are worth considering and understanding at their core, and filtering into your decision making process.
Dude i'm almost 52 (lol i had to do the math) years old. I didn't even begin to figure out any of the shit I've written here till I was probably 35 years old by which time i had a 7 & 9 yr old.
Bottom line is that all phases of American school have an order. It was designed during the industrial revolution to create citizens that had a basic skillset and an appropriate understanding of hierarchies. You've actively ignored a major part of that.
