Back when I was a T.A. in physics I'd be rich if I had a nickel for every time somebody told me "I understand the concepts but I just can't do the problem" and then, when I worked with them to debug their answer, found that they really got the concepts backwards.

One big theme I see is that people want something emotionally out of physics that it just can't give and if you are misaligned on these you are going to accomplish nothing even if you can do the math:

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Causes-beyond-Physics-Streater/d...