This is probably the wrong group for your discussion. Many of us are engineers, many others are still in college, most have gotten all the scars they need. We really can't provide you with motivation, that's all on you!
Pay more attention to what I said above about the collision. In my view, and I have NO expertise, you have a problem where electronics as a hobby and electronics as a job get scrambled together and you don't really WANT to work on hobby projects. Getting the motivation to work on hobby projects is all on you.
Were it me, I would focus on the education and let the hobby slide. Grad school was the most fun I ever had in school. I just ate it up!
I'm long retired (14 years and counting) and I enjoy a couple of hobbies including electronics. Yet I still have problems finding a project worth doing. It doesn't have to be useful but it does need to be educational. I have a similar problem with my other hobbies. My interest ebbs and flows. I'll work on one hobby for a while and then get bored and start with another hobby until I get bored. Rinse and repeat.
What kind of a project would really grab the attention of a grad school student? It isn't going to be something simple. It needs to be as challenging as the university projects, maybe more so.
One thing I have been playing with is analog computing. Back in the very old days, differential equations were difficult to deal with. Think slide rules! We had the Spirule, a pencil and paper plus Laplace Transforms. The real engineers had access to analog computers.
I built up a little analog computer and can now model systems like the Mass-Spring-Damper. Yes, I know that is a trivial example of a DE but it's kind of cool to watch it work. Yes, I can do it in Matlab but it just isn't the same as doing it with bits and pieces of electronic parts.
If your not familiar with Lord Kelvin's approach to solving DEs, here's a page:
http://chalkdustmagazine.com/features/analogue-computing-fun-differential-equations/First find a project! Once you do, you will spend all of your free time working on it. It will need to be a grand project to keep your attention.