By the concepts, what I mean is the important ideas. Another common mistake made by students is to ignore the general concepts and focus solely on specific problems. The difficulty this causes is that if you don't understand the general concepts, you won't be able to see how to approach solving a specific problem. This is esentially the same as number one above. Mathematics is the language of science.
Mathematical equations are just like sentences.
Equations can express ideas in a very compact, powerful way. In most physical science courses you will need to learn equations and how to use them to solve problems. The first step is to learn what the variables in the equations stand for and what their units are. A very common mistake is to learn the equation but not know what the letters stand for, making the equation useless. Once you know what the variables are, learn one form of the equation.