[Gadget470]

First off, let me lay out my situation:

I'm a freshman at a community college (mostly to save money, which my family and I don't have much of).
I was a "C Student" through High School.
I consider myself intelligent and well articulated.
I believe (undiagnosed) that I have some form of ADD.
I can often be a perfectionist.

About my ADD problem:
I am a very poor reader of books (including text books, and books with illustrations). I can stare at a page or picture for up to and above 10 minutes before snapping back into realizing that I am reading.
Things of comedy, such as the "All in a Day's Work" in Reader's Digest or Newspaper Comic Strips, I can usually finish entirely without a "space out" break.
Things of interest to me, such as an explanation of a design, schematics, etc. I sometimes can last, but not always.

I never, in my grade school career, studied for a single test. I never needed to. Up until my Junior year, I just.. understood everything. I learned everything by osmosis, and remembered it all. I rarely did homework, but got A's on tests. My view was "If I know the material, why should I practice it with homework. I have better things I can do."
For some reason, through my Junior and Senior years, tests no longer just "came to me", which caused my grades to drop further than my previous years.

I told myself I was going to work my butt off in college, and now I'm here, making the same mistakes I used to. Ignoring homework until the night before it's due, bombing tests because I'm not asking questions... struggling.

I know the simple answers, "Do it right away, ask questions. Problem solved." The simple things are the hardest part. Tomorrow I have 2 tests, one in Beginning German, the other in Macro-Economics. I intended to study for the first time on Monday and Tuesday (Yesterday, Today) but I didn't do very well at it.

(I have German from 10a-12n, and Econ from 12:30p-3:30p)
Problems:
German: I've bombed the previous 3 tests, because I'm not understanding the small stuff. Word order, spellings vs English pronunciation, etc. and taking huge hits because of it.
Economics: I wasn't at the last two classes because I've been too stressed out after leaving German. I've done A/B on previous tests.

Study Problems:
My girlfriend is developing good study habits, and I think would have the ability to be a great teacher. She is Bilingual (French, English) and picks up on Language Basics rather well. I asked her for help with studying for these two tests and she agreed.
We started right where my last German test left off, and I just plain old don't understand almost anything. She told me that it's almost pointless to review material that I didn't actually learn, and that she can't really teach me because she doesn't know it.
We decided to try and learn from the beginning together, and went to Page 1 of my German book and started going. We got through most of the first chapter before taking a break.

So we went downstairs where her mom was watching Law & Order. She was going to take a short nap while I worked on my Econ. My good ol' ADD kicked in and I got through 2 questions of my Econ work then stared at the TV for 2 hours.

Here I sit now, understanding roughly 1/2 a chapter of German, and not ready for either test. Writing a long thing on how I waste my time (Ironic), and how my ADD problems cause me to waste even more time (I've checked AIM Away Messages 4 times while writing this).

My question is to the people who have had to break poor (or no) study habits, and to the people who have ADD (Diagnosed or Assumed):
How can I convince myself to concentrate on what is important?

The simple answers of 'just do it' ... don't do anything. I've tried that, I end up staring into space. Any suggestions you have for breaking this 12 year habit would be greatly appreciated.

I thank you for your time if you read all of this.