Hey Crampz. Believe it or not, I have been exactly where you are. I dropped out of of college with a semester and a half left to graduate. It took me 8 years with periods of unemployment and time working shit jobs to finally realize I needed to finish what I started. In fact, since I attended college in a different state from where I was living at the time, I took a distance learning course in order to graduate with a Bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies.
The course I took was writing intensive, so please take that into consideration. IIRC I had 9 months to complete the course. However, the course had as many assignments as a normal 4.5 month semester. Therefore I was able to take my time and did not have to worry about the same types of incremental deadlines that a brick and mortar class has. When I say incremental deadlines, I mean specific dates throughout the semester in which assignments are due. I was able to turn assignments in at my leisure. However, keep in mind that I have mild ADD and sometimes like to procrastinate. So I would be careful not to wait until the last minute to complete all the assignments. I think it only took me a few weeks to run through all the assignments but it was to turn everything in at the last minute because I fucked off too much. If I were to do it again, I would finish all the assignments as early as possible. All the correspondence between my professor and me took place over email.
Difficulty is subjective. Distance learning can be a great way to get your education if that is the way you want to go. My opinion is that potential employers will often be open-minded about hiring people with distance learning Bachelor's degrees. However, if you want to take it to the next level, i.e. graduate school for a Masters or Doctorate, then brick and mortar university is prolly still the better option.
Good luck and feel free to ask more questions.
