Hey DavFreak, you should be commended for your focus and drive. Too many people these days just assume if you are young and have something nice, somebody had to give it to you. At 17, I had a dressed out VW van (full living quarters with redwood panelling, a state of the art Muntz 4 track tape deck (later cassette) and the engine tricked out. I could, and did, live away from home for months at a time. I also had a pretty nice motorcycle. I paid for it all by working. Some of that work was a real job but a lot it was fixing other guys' bikes or tutoring them so they wouldn't flunk out or loose priviledges from their parents because of bad grades. My folks couldn't buy me stuff, my dad was a teacher and back then, they were even lower on the totem pole salary wise than they are now. If I wanted something, I had to earn it.
So hang in there, you will appreciate what you earn a lot more than what you are given.