haha, I like it! Thank you for sharing your feelings with us.
It sounds like you are in a similar predicament I had in high school. I was very smart and I grasped the material immediately, but I thought it was all bullshit because I was judged based on my homework and not my actual knowledge. I felt that if I had learned the material it should be reflected in my grade.
Whenever I had a legitimate question, the teachers would just shoot me down, for example wanting to know why the area of a triangle is 1/2 base times height. To this I would invariably receive the answer "Because that's the way it is" or sometimes "Explaining it would be too high level math for you to understand" My answer: FUCK YOU! Who the fuck are you to tell me I won't be able to understand something? Try to fucking teach it to me first before you decide I'm too dumb to grasp it. Eventually I found I had to just stop caring because it was all total bullshit, the entire system was not designed to teach you anything but rather simply to mold you into direction following mindless drones who do as they're told and don't think.
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
^that's a great example of how I feel about the state of math education in k-12 schooling right now. It's a very interesting read, and I think someone on this forum actually linked it to me originally.
What I eventually discovered is that I actually have a passion for the subject, it was just squashed by my instructors for many years. I think the same thing has happened to you, you say it's what you wanted to do, but now you've just stopped caring. You feel like the instructors have somehow sullied photography in your mind, as agreeing with them is a much better way to get good marks than being true to yourself and trying to express something real.
You wonder about the validity of your entire degree if someone can just bullshit their way through it by giving the teachers what they want rather than trying to put real effort and emotion into their work.
My advice to you is this. Endure, and know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It might make you feel dirty and unclean to pander to the instructor's wishes, stifling your own creativity, but you know you want this degree. And once you're out of the mire of bullshit, you will be the one in charge of your own destiny. If an organization does not like your photographic style, too fucking bad for them, go find one that will appreciate you. There's always going to be a segment of people who are going to like your work, as long as it's good and it speaks from the heart.
Unfortunately, none of those people are in charge of your grade right now, but once you're free to seek them out of your own free will, being appreciated for what you're really trying to do with photography will re-ignite the passion that currently lingers buried and unseen beneath the surface.
ENFP: Oh My God... I just don't care! 
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