How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work?
timf: Shit work is definitely less painful if you "just take care of it" and get it out of your consciousness faster. I think learning to let that "lesser of two evils" trade-off motivate you to action is something that will take many years and will always leave room for improvement...It works for me to have higher goals.  These days, 99% of my shit work can be easily categorized into long term goals and desires.  This does not make them quite "transformed" into something intrinsically motivating like you are asking for but what it does at least is make them fairly easy to "just take care of."  It takes the sting out or something.People that tell you "you're always going to have to do work you don't want to do" are correct but what you might not realize is that this does not have to be a significant part of your day like in high school, so this "unhappy for the rest of my life" is a red herring.  You are not going to be as unhappy when you can align your coursework more easily with your interests. College is way better than high school.  Post-college is even better once you find a money situation that works for you.Which leads to some more immediate advice: see what it will take to apply to college early.  I got out of high school after junior year by taking my last remaining credits at a local college over the summer.  My school was not set up for this, I had to do some serious convincing to administrators and parents.  Almost a full year of work avoided.  And no, I did not need a 4.0 GPA.P.S. Don't get pregnant or get anyone pregnant for at least 15 years :-)