As for school, I am very lazy and don't study. I have no idea how I manage to keep up good grades. This habit will probably change by college. I am fortunate enough to have the internet and my father. My dad has certainly pushed me to educate myself rather than just "go with the flow" (of stupidity). He is an incredibly smart guy, but isn't into technology much. Oh well.
Maybe my world view is warped, but here is my opinion as a person like you 10 years ago... In those 10 years, I finished high school, graduated college, and have now worked for about 5 years.
Don't expect college to change that much over high school. I did the same as you through high school and extended it through college. Never met a challenge on the science side, took a painting class as junior that was a challenge for someone that has never drawn or painted ... everyone that knows me thought I was crazy, but I found it to be one of the best classes I took in college. Skillwise i did not learn much, but you can learn a lot about yourself if you push your boundaries. Anyway, most things you'll actually be doing career wise you will have to learn on your own.
I'm a software engineer, I had the same self taught skills at the end of high school as I did at the end of collage. Before collage I could not get interviews with companies in my town, which has many large high tech companies, HP, Agilent, Intel, etc.
College got me two things:
It got me through the front door to interview with companies leading to first job/career. Instead of me going to them they came right to campus for first interviews. I ended up working for a company not even on my radar, Lockheed Martin, in a city a couple hours away from where I went to school.
The second thing... I was never one to party, but you still meet a lot of people on campus and will probably meet up with people similar to you. I happened to meet my wife when we both interviewed for the same position.
Once you get on the job don't expect a massive change. Your education was dumbed down so the people around you could move forward. In college there is some separation by field, but many still move forward and they then become your colleagues. The only good thing about all this is if your company then ranks you by performance... getting paid and recognized for your performance should motivate you out of being lazy (did for me). It doesn't take much to beat the rest of my team, but it is certainly more effort than I put into any of my schooling. Those little motivators have settled me into a role I enjoy being the guy that troubleshoots out difficult problems and I adopt new skills, so my manager can send off on interesting short term assignments to help other teams. If you can troubleshoot problems and learn new skills you will be a top performer on just about any engineering team as most of the rest are just there to collect a paycheck.
I've only worked at HP and Lockheed Martin, so smaller firms and engineering in more competitive disciplines might have better competition as they separate the wheat from the chaff ...
Warped or not?
