I realize that grades are the practical, short term goal, but really understanding a topic can be valuable for a lifetime. Homework is generally a chore because few instructors below college use constructivist methods. I've always thought the ARCS model (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) was a pretty solid guideline for lessons, but even most professors don't employ it. But you can try to angle lessons that way yourself. Where you can, try make the homework match your interests and goals. Try to associate papers and projects with subjects you're already familiar with and interested in. Like, if you're into media and you have a WWII paper to do, you can focus on how both the Allies and Axis powers slipped propaganda into popular media.
Oh, and when it comes to math (maths if you're in the commonwealth), I have gotten _so much_ out of my high school teacher's practice of making us graph equations by hand. As in it has majorly helped me with shading equations, understanding materials, aspects of programming, and tons of other stuff relevant to my life beyond school. Mind, graphing calculators weren't the norm back then, but he really drilled us. The thing to keep in mind with equations as a digital artist is that they define how so very many things work, from shading to simulations, and it really helps to have a sense of what they mean. Now I not only have an instinctive understanding of existing equations by looking at them, I have a sense of how to create equations that do what I want. The big things you have to know to graph equations in the form of y = f(x) is what does the equation do at x = 0, how do you make y = 0, and what general sort of shape does it have.
So just as an example, when I started using GC linear workflow that's now the default in Poser and DS, I found I had an issue in low light situations. I mentioned it to Bagginsbill, and he looked into it and found that in point of fact the exponential gamma curve is an approximation for the real sRGB equations, which go linear at lower values. I'm sure that sounds like gobbledy gook to a lot of people, but the basic point is that because I understood the general behavior of exponential and linear functions as they get close to zero, I understood why some of my GC works looked too flat to me, why some of my low light works were too brightly lit by less than 1% intensity, and why true sRGB linear workflow was much better for low light images. Which in turn helped me address the problem and explore rendering options that avoided it in case I needed to.
My biggest pet peeve with how math is taught is that it's taught the opposite way of how it was created. Most of what we teach non-mathematicians, even in college, was developed and refined by people trying to solve a real world problem. They went from the specific to the general, which is how humans work. But we tend to tell students that they have to master the math first before understanding the specific problems in other subjects first, when the math they're taught is just the solution the people studying the subject arrived at after trying lots of different ways of understanding. Math is just a really useful and versatile tool for understanding aspects of our lives we want to master, but it gets taught as an entirely separate entity. Which is cool for mathematicians who will tell you about some other aspect of math if you ask them about applications for the topic they're focused on, but for everyone else, math is only relevant to the specific problems they want to solve.
If anyone tells you, "You have to understand algebra before you can do chemistry," or "You have to understand calculus before you can do physics," know that people invented types of math to master those subjects, not the other way around. And humans brains are wired to generalize from relevant individual experiences, but aren't really suited to go the other way. You would be completely overwhelmed if your brain tried to process everything about your entire environment, so it filters a lot of stuff out. Mostly subconsciously and outside of your control. If you're having to fight your brain's inclination to consider information irrelevant noise, there's almost definitely a better approach to the subject you're studying.