[smbullet]

I would find someone's homework template and just copy it. Then when you go to copy your work to LaTeX just replace their content without touching the formatting if that makes sense. I too tried to learn LaTeX in college but decided the learning curve wasn't worth overcoming and what I wanted really wasn't that unique.

Eventually you're going to come up with your own formatting ideas that you can tweak over time but it's much less stressful than drinking out of the firehose when your homework is due in four hours.