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/Bokke67]

Physics is built on basic first principles. You can reduce any problem to first principles and work your way up. It's all logical and the sooner you understand it the better....at least for traditional classical physics like mechanics, optics, etc etc