ngl I was so close to just accepting that physics was going to destroy my GPA. first test of the year I got a 45% and I remember sitting in the hallway after getting it back just staring at it. I had studied. I did the homework. I watched youtube videos.
the problem wasn't how much I was studying, it was that I was doing practice problems completely wrong. I'd open the textbook, look at a problem, peek at the solution after like 30 seconds, tell myself I got it, and move on. but that's just reading answers.
what actually worked was skimming through all the problems first and only stopping on the ones where I felt even a little unsure. if I was confident I could do it, I skipped it. sounds counterintuitive but it meant I was spending time on the stuff that actually had holes in it instead of just doing easy reps. over a few months I probably did 200-300 problems total but they were all ones that genuinely challenged me.
the other thing was keeping a mistake log. every time I got something wrong I wrote down not just what I got wrong but why. was I mixing up formulas, was I misreading the problem, was I skipping a step I didn't realize mattered. I tried a bunch of different ways to organize it, notion for a while, then just a notes app, then a physical notebook. before every test I'd go through the log instead of rereading my notes. somewhere along the way a friend showed me knowunity and what's actually kind of cool about it is the AI answers are trained on notes from other students, not just some generic model, so when I asked it stuff it actually explained things the way a student would explain them, which clicked better for me than textbook language. used it mostly to turn my mistake log into quick quizzes before tests.
last thing was learning to recognize problem types. once I realized that most physics problems fall into like 4 or 5 categories and each one has its own approach, it stopped feeling like every problem was a surprise. kinematics looks different from energy problems looks different from force problems. once you can spot the category you're already halfway there.
ended the semester with a 94 on the final. same class, same teacher, way different result. if you're struggling in physics right now I really do think the issue is probably how you're practicing, not how smart you are.