OP:
In light of the fact that you’re talking from the perspective of a school that is overly obsessed with receiving high GPAs, I see where you’re coming from. I remember exactly how self-destructive that attitude was and how much better life is when you stop worrying about appearing perfect and instead worry about bettering yourself. A 4.0 GPA is less important than appearing “well rounded” which is also less important that doing meaningful activities in high school that help to establish what kind of person you are. For example, you talked about how certain you were of pursuing meteorology until you found a path that was more suitable for you personally. This is a very common story because perspective changes people and their career paths.
However, intentionally or not, you are glorifying a low GPA, which is straight up wrong and tends to lead people astray. It is not to your credit that you chose not to turn in assignments late - general life skills such as punctuality and discipline are important skills to be learned in high school. It is not to your credit that you valued your extracurricular activities over your schoolwork - knowing your priorities is another important life skill to be learned in high school. You seem to have worked things out, at least as far as it comes to college admissions, but you are glorifying problems in your educational experience that did not contribute to your success but merely failed to detract from it. There was more luck involved in finding your way into the right college with a lower GPA, but it’s not an example to be followed, a trait to encourage, or a habit that you should keep. In that sense, this letter can send the wrong message to people, that it’s alright to just treat high school like it doesn’t matter because somehow things will work anyways. That’s not what should be encouraged because doing well in high school really is pretty important.
Education gives you a lot of skills that don’t seem valuable at first but pay off over a lifetime. Don’t dismiss their value so quickly. It took me many years to realize just how important the base of knowledge I gained from high school academics really was.