I am a web-developer with a desire to expand my skill-set to mathematics relevant to programming.

As 2nd career, I am stuck in college doing some of the requirements while working.

I was hoping the my education will teach me the needed skills to apply math, however I am quickly finding it to be too much easily-testable breadth-based approach very inefficient for the time invested.

For example in my calculus 2 class, the only remotely useful mind expanding experience I had was volumes and areas under the curve. The rest was just monotonous glorified algebra, which while comes easy to me, could be done by software like wolfram alpha within seconds. This is not my idea of learning math.

So here I am a frustrated student looking for a way to improve my understanding of math in a way that focuses on application, understanding and maximally removed needless tedium.

However I cannot find a good long term study strategy with this approach in mind.

So for those of like mind, how would you go about learning the necessary math without worrying too much about stuff a computer can do much better?