At this point (if you are the one student in twenty or thirty - being generous - that actually reads introductions in textbooks) you are ready to begin learning physics. Do not rely on your instructor teaching you physics, with him or her the active principle, the font of knowledge, and you the thirsty vessel, the passive recipient of knowledge. It ain't a-gonna work that way. You will have to work to learn physics, and can learn it without an instructor if it comes to that (so having a poor instructor is No Excuse for failing, much as a good one can indeed help you succeed).
Get used to reading and rereading this text, to working through the derivations, to solving lots of problems and difficult problems lots of times, to ``playing'' with the ideas presented in a formal lab, with the accompanying octave/matlab programs, with stuff you find in your pockets or in your desk drawer or in your closet. Use the method of three passes to do your homework instead of trying to do it the night before it is due. Make physics fun for you by taking charge of how you study it - or just don't bother.
If there is one thing I've learned as a teacher and a parent, it is that you cannot (as a teacher or a parent) ``make'' anyone learn anything. I don't teach physics, really. I set up conditions wherein a true student of physics can learn it if they want to. The conditions are full of all sorts of carrot-and-stick constructs to motivate the process of learning and help them ``want'' to learn it - mostly connected to the artificial economy of ``grades''.
However, humans, alas, do not readily jump through hoops just to get a biscuit. More often they have to want to be on the other side of the hoop or they just aren't going to jump. Your very first chore in learning physics is to think carefully and answer honestly - do you want to learn physics? Will it be fun for you, provide you with personal satisfaction, make you happy to do so? If the answer is at least 60% optimistic yes, willing to give it (literally) ``the old college try'' then dig right in and we'll see what we can do.
If it is no (or a lackadaisical 30% yes) and you're only taking this course because ``you have to'' in order to become a Doctor or an Engineer, in order to do something else - I beg you to try, very hard, to find some reason in your own heart other than ``just'' the requirement per se to take the course and do the work. If your heart isn't in it, you're probably not going to do the work with the degree of personal involvement and enthusiasm necessary to actually get something out of it.
There are reasons for this (as is always the case, once you learn to look for them). Biological neuropsychologists have experimentally showed that various components of the learning process are mediated by the limbic system of the brain (e.g. the amygdala, the hypothalamus). These are the centers of emotion, not logic and reason in the brain. As you have doubtless already experienced by the time you take this course, learning is significantly improved when study is accompanied by positive emotional responses and experiences. Conversely, learning is negatively impacted if you loathe the study process, dislike the instructor, can't make sense of the material, or find the subject boring and hence emotionally distasteful.
This creates the most viscious negative feedback cycle in organized learning - you ``hate'' some subject which keeps you from learning it easily which makes you hate it more (often expressed as being ``bored'' by the subject), spiralling down to a poor or even failing grade and bitter resentment associated with loathing the material that you just refuse to understand or even try to understand and afterwards actively avoid. Does this sound familiar?
This is where having a ``bad'' professor can really hurt you - it is so easy for dislike of a teacher to transfer into dislike for the material they are teaching and start the cycle. It is also where early negative experiences (blowing the first quiz, homework set, hour exam) caused by anything from inadequate prior knowledge and preparation to actual laziness can start the cycle. All sorts of sources of stress or anxiety can trigger the process, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the material itself!
Recognize right now, very deeply, that this is not something that is beyond your ability to control! To at least some extent, you can choose to take pleasure or not in studying almost anything, although you may have to literally alter the way you think about things and do all sorts of work to discover this.
Be aware of this negative spiral, and don't let this happen to you. Find a way to take a certain amount of pleasure from studying physics, be ``self-actualized'' in your study of physics, be proactive in your study of physics and you'll almost certainly do ``fine'' in the course. Otherwise you really are better off not taking the course, in some deep philosophical sense, even if it does mean altering all sorts of life plans. Don't do academic things half-way, don't do them resentfully. Do them with an open heart and mind and invest yourself in their accomplishment, and you'll thrive where otherwise you would wither.
This is the kind of lesson that transcends ``just'' learning physics, and is hopefully the very first important lesson of this course. Now to work.
Skim read the following section on mathematics. Your goal isn't to learn all of this math - in fact, hopefully you already know most of it as it is a course ``requirement'' that you are at least familiar with it. Your goal is to get an idea of what is there so you'll know where to look for it when you encounter (for example) the use of vector cross products in the text and realize that while you have covered them (a year or more ago) in some course, you've forgotten them and don't really remember what they are or how to calculate them any more.
You may also find sections (like the section on the algebra of complex numbers) that go beyond what you've learned at this point. Go over this in a bit more detail, maybe work through the most important algebraic derivations, pictures, and conclusions. Don't spend a huge amount of time on it - just enough to convince yourself that you can find it when you need it and understand it when you find it, later.