Fail?

When is giving up failure? I've been struggling for years to complete the goal of getting a college degree. I've changed majors a whole bunch of times. I don't know what I want to do when I grow up yet. I don't really have a career in mind. I have dreams of traveling around the U.S. and writing about the people and culture I find there. So, I put together this program in American Studies at GMU. But, it is going to take a really time to finish. The limited time that I have to devote to classes and the limited way in which the courses I've picked out come up in the schedule is really frustrating me. This semester I'm taking a class that I'm just not prepared for...and I'm beginning to see my strengths and weakness in a blaring overhead flurescent light. I'm great at class discussion. I'm intuitive. I see and feel literature in a very romantic way. However, when it comes to analysing it, I'm lost. I can't look at a book that way until I am sitting in class with a bunch of other people and they are pointing things out...that's when I can notice things that they haven't and contribute. But I wouldn't have seen those things at all, if it was just me and the book. So, I'm sitting here now, wondering, should I just realize that this is a waste of time and energy or should I take the challenges and keep going. I am learning. But I'm not feeling like it's going to worth it in the end. Let's face facts here. I'm an adult. Have been for a while now. I work in a job. I write for fun. It isn't going to be a career for me. This program I've designed is full of interesting classes. But at the end of the several years of frustration that it is going to take to complete it, am I going to be better off? Will it open any doors? Or will I just be an adult, working a job, with a degree in something entirely unrelated? Do I take my innocent way of reading and make it mean? Do I sacrifice my freedom and my time for my love of learning? And maybe my love of learning is for a different kind of learning...a more independent kind of learning...born of experience, interest, curiosity, and adventure. What oh what, shall I do?