So here's the thing: apart from you and maybe a few friends, nobody really cares about your "forging your own path". It may give your life meaning, which is important. But in any sort of professional / market context, people just emphatically. Do. Not. Care.

Speaking from experience, I have often taken the hard path. I've always regretted it and often, if I'm being honest, it's out of a misguided sense of stubbornness.

That's why I recommend trying college, to the OP. Maybe he can learn advanced mathematics by himself, in isolation. But that isn't the maximum-likelihood path. And when you're doing something hard, I've learned it pays to do everything you can to stack the deck in your favor.

I think the main thing is to realize you only live one. I have friends who are more successful than me in every way. One earns literally 10x what I do, others work at more famous companies, still others receive absurd amounts of money from their parents for sitting on their ass. You can't choose your hand in life, but you can choose how you play it. So it's really up to you, whether you want to play the game on easy mode, or hard mode. Or whether you want to feel sorry for yourself or just make something of the hand you're dealt, though it may not be "fair".

I have no idea what point you are trying to make, my point is simple, a poorly taught college course is worse for comprehension than reading the source material and coming to your own understanding. As a Sr. Dev, I have mentored many people that are still in college. I have seen the struggle that they have endured in classes such as Discrete Math. I have held their hands through poorly constructed math courses that have bad or misleading information, and not from the same school. Maybe you were privileged enough to go to a good school where they had their shit together but not all colleges are made equal. I learned most of what I know from reading the material myself. I'm not bragging. This is not coming from a position of, look at me, I am so fucking cool because I did it on my own. No, this is a statement that not all educational systems are built the same, that there are faults in our general education system and some people are better off picking it up and running with it, forging their own path, than to have is spoon fed to them by an idiot that doesn't know what he is talking about or by a broken online courseware spewing bad information. So spare me the bullshit of feeling sorry for yourself, or about life not dealing you the fair hand. Because I don't believe that for a fucking moment.