There are relatively few things that you will need to remember by heart. Physics is not about memorization. Instead, you will need to understand things. Physics is a reductionist science, in the sense that most things can be understood and derived from a small number of basic principles. The goal of this class is to equip you with mental tools to use those principles. You will learn general techniques of reasoning that will enable you to think about and describe numerous natural phenomena. Problem solving is not about plugging values into the equations and using your calculator. It is more important (and more rewarding!) to understand what the numbers mean.

To do well in physics you will need several things. A good conceptual base is the first of them. The second one is imagination. Physical experiments provide facts, but it takes imagination to make generalizations.

You will also need to invest your time. There is no way around it. How much time depends on your skills and preparation, but you should expect to spend 2 to 3 hours after lecture on reading and solving problems. Investing time does not, however, mean that by spending 3 hours you will be guaranteed to achieve success. In fact, you can achive a lot more by spending less time, and this has to do with the way your thought process works. Creative process (of which solving physics problems is an example!) has two stages:

      - At the first stage, you work hard to find the solution, you try different approaches, get stuck, and try again. Frustration is part of it; there is nothing wrong with getting stuck from time to time. 
       - If the attempts are uncuccessful,  you abandon the problem and turn to doing something else. Your subconcious mind, however, continues working, seeking the solution, and it is this work that often leads to intellectual breakthroughs. This stage, however, can only be effective if you worked hard enough during the first stage.

This means that, to save time, you should start thinking about the homework problems as early as possible, you should never put them off for the last moment.