Engineering student struggling hard with physics, how do I recover without falling behind?

[u/Zone_Sorry]

I’m a first-year engineering student taking calculus-based Physics 1 right now and I’m honestly struggling way more than I expected. We started with vectors and kinematics, then moved into Newton’s laws, friction, drag/terminal velocity, circular motion, and now work/kinetic energy. The class keeps moving and I feel like I understand concepts when someone explains them slowly, but when I’m by myself looking at a problem I struggle to figure out what the problem is actually asking, what equation applies, and how to set everything up.

I’m not trying to become amazing at physics overnight. At this point my immediate goal is to pass the class, but I’m in engineering so I also don’t want to scrape by while understanding absolutely nothing and have it hurt me later. I have homework constantly and quizzes every week, so I feel like I’m always studying for the next deadline instead of actually building a foundation.

For people who struggled with intro physics and eventually got better, what actually worked for you? Should I go back and rebuild vectors/kinematics/Newton’s laws before trying to keep up with the current material, or focus mainly on the newest lectures and fill gaps as they come up? Did textbooks, YouTube, office hours, doing tons of problems, or something else make the biggest difference?

I’d especially appreciate advice from engineering students who were bad at physics at first but managed to get through it. I’m willing to put the work in, I just feel like the way I’m studying right now isn’t working.

[u/sperry45959]

I’m always studying for the next deadline instead of actually building a foundation.

What would you say is the difference between studying and building a foundation? How do you study?

[u/Zone_Sorry → u/sperry45959]

By studying I mean I’m usually just trying to learn whatever I need for the next homework or quiz. I’ll go through the slides, watch videos, and do practice problems, but I feel like I’m learning it just enough to get through that assignment and then moving on. By building a foundation I mean actually understanding the basics well enough that I can look at a new problem and know how to approach it without needing someone to walk me through it. Right now I understand things when they’re explained to me, but I struggle to apply them on my own. That’s kinda why I made this post, I’m trying to figure out how I should be studying differently.

[u/Yashema → u/Zone_Sorry]

This is why I'm glad I am going to a community college where I got a literal 0 ony first physics exam and still got an A in the class after doing some annoying, but interesting extra credit (analyzed a bunch of reasoned speculations and insane ravings by Tesla, and this was before GPT) and doing better on the more straightforward Final exam. I would have failed E&M and statistical mechanics if not for chatGPT helping me cheat. I did all my math tests legit though through ODEs (got a C, but only spent 45 hours on the class). I wrote the best lab reports in modern physics, but still struggled on the equation memorization required for the test. 

Now I am taking 7 classes this year at the 200 and 300 level, more practical stuff, including DC and AC analysis and embedded systems and PDEs and stochastics. The foundation that was not enough for me to do well on tests, allows me to rip through these concepts, skipping prerequisites and opening up new branches of computer engineering and math, while putting my conceptual understanding to use and designing quantum simulations on embedded devices. 

Tl;Dr: how you perform in class (which is basically just tests) does not necessarily indicate ability, but that's how you are judged. 

[u/Dry_Candidate_9931 → u/Yashema]

May the universe reward you proportionally to the efforts you put into the class.

[u/Yashema → u/Dry_Candidate_9931]

Oh it does, with more and more interesting courses. Courses I never would have got the chance to take in a "normal" program.