I'm there with you on seeing applications, but I never could bring myself to do math homework. Even today, I don't think I would even though I am 100% certain that doing practice problems is of huge benefit (every moment you're thinking about the mechanics of doing the math, you're not thinking about solving the problem that you're doing the math for).

I eventually hit a wall with both ordinary differential equations and vector calculus[1], which forced me to switch from Physics to CS.

1: And I thought vector calculus was the coolest thing ever; you can use Gauss's theorem to derive Archimedes's Principle from integrating the partial-pressures over an arbitrary shape, which is one of the most elegant things I've ever seen.