what i do is look for inspiration outside the classroom. teachers and lectures are a great help for me but only if i have a way to frame the information in my mind. so i am always looking at things that inspire me to do little projects or make me happy.

here are two things that inspire me a lot to do whatever i need:
http://www.ted.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/jwcfree?blend=1&ob=4#p/a

also i know this sounds obvious but make friends in your classes, they don't have to be older or anything, just make friends everywhere you are. say "hey, im supremewarrior. what's up??"

Although I heard we were going to be programming little robots to do things using C programming language which got me interested in the open day that I went to.

Yes I am also interested in this but we only do it third year for like a little while. It's kind of cruel to label it "Gaming, Simulation, and Robotics" when only ~1 month(dunno the exact amount but I heard it is very very short) is spent on actual robots. HOW WILL I WORK FOR IROBOT OR BOSTON DYNAMICS AND MAKE ROBOTIC SLAVES?

-Focus during the lecture and stay alert like your life depends on it.  I didn't learn to do that until my third year of college.
-Do everything right away, regardless of when the deadline is.  You might think "It'll probably take me an hour to do this homework, and they gave me until next Tuesday to do it, so I'll allot myself an hour on Monday night to work on it."  That's definitely the wrong attitude for numerous reasons: a) you might have dramatically underestimated how long it will take b) that gives you no extra days to ask the teacher or classmates about anything that confuses you c) you might have forgot what you heard in the lecture a week ago
-Don't think that college is leisure city.  You have to treat it like it's the challenge of your life, like you would boot camp, a professional fight, or something along those lines.  I don't know how you got the money to pay for college, but a lot of people get the money fairly effortlessly, whether it involves getting scholarships based on your high school gpa, signing a promissory note for some loans, or getting money from your parents.  It's easy to not see the significance of the money spent when it was so effortless to obtain.  But in actuality, it's dead serious.  If you drop out after 1, 2, or 3 years; and don't work in the meanwhile, then you'll have to reflect on how you could've had a stupid job and been up $60,000, instead of down $60,000.  I'd probably be correct to assume that you've never had anywhere near $60,000 in the bank, but for motivational purposes, at least take one second to imagine how good you'd feel about that, and remember you're giving that-up to try to successfully complete college.
-Study at least a little bit for every class, every day.  That helps a lot to prevent you from forgetting information, compared to studying in big chunks, one day a week.