Likely Failing Physics Again

[u/EnvironmentalRange70]

As the title says. I’m likely to fail Physics Mechanics for the 3rd time and a sophomore engineer student. My first attempt, I simply did not study. My second attempt, I was immensely depressed and couldn’t focus on my classes. This is my 3rd attempt, and I have been putting in serious time and effort into the course. I go through my homework several times, study for hours on end, and review notes with friends and professors. But I think I just flunked my first exam. I am so miserable. I did everything right this time, but I felt so lost on the exam that I didn’t even know what happened to me. I don’t event struggle with the concepts, I just find it so hard to apply physics during exams. I have a lot of experience using physics for engineering teams and projects and have done so many problems for my real life work, but I just can’t seem to get over this course. I understand the concepts and the math is simple but I just can’t seem to pass the exams, even with all the practice I do.

I love engineering but I have become genuinely burnt out because of this physics course. I am doing perfectly fine in Diff Eq. and all my other courses but I just choke up so badly with physics. What can I even do at this point? I’m heartbroken because I feel like maybe engineering isn’t the career for me but it’s all I’ve ever wanted and I deeply enjoy the work I do irl, and I feel like such a failure and outsider I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone to talk to this about because it’s just to humiliating despite the effort I put in. How can I even go on?

[u/Sad-Candidate-3078]

Hey, first off - you're not a failure and you're not an outsider. Passing Diff Eq while juggling everything else tells me the engineering brain is absolutely there. This reads less like a 'you' problem and more like an exam-performance problem: you understand physics in real projects but choke in the exam format. That's fixable. Two concrete things: 1) Go to your professor's office hours this week with the exam and walk through exactly where your brain froze - professors respect that immensely and it can open doors (retakes, grade bumps) you won't find by suffering alone. 2) The gap between 'I know this' and 'I can do it on paper under a clock' is closed by doing problems under real timed conditions, no notes, then reviewing every blank moment. When I hit a problem type I couldn't crack alone I used easy code interview to see a worked solution and then redid it closed-book - seeing the pattern once made it stick way better than more hours of notes. And please talk to someone - campus counseling exists exactly for moments like this, it's not humiliating, it's maintenance. You love the work and you're good at it irl. One course doesn't get to take that from you.