I am an EE.
First year of the collage at the C lessons
i think that the first thing that i will fail at my education life will be the programming,
indeed that happened, i failed,
at the summer school exams i memorised 10 pages of programs that likely to be asked,
i passed the exams knowing nothing about programming.
Now i am an embedded programmer,
i love programming, i love problem solving.
That is possible for a technician, not an engineer.
You should read "Profession" by Isaac Asimov, since it is directly relevant to that. I've previously posted a link to it.
I read that Asimov story, and found it interesting that (in the story) it was claimed that only one person in 100,000 were suited to be the inventors, scientists, etc. I believe that in our world the number is much more generous than that.
And I also think it is possible to self-educate and become an engineer. Life story:
I dropped out of college after a couple of years and never got a degree of any sort. I had become interested in electronics before the age of ten, and (when I wasn't trying to be a bass guitar rock star) spent tens of thousands of hours reading books, magazines, and experimenting. I did take EE Technology courses in my early twenties, but never bothered to finish up and get my degree because I became bored -- I already knew that stuff. I worked as a technician for a few years and then advanced into an engineering role. At this point I already had better design chops than many of the "real" engineers I was working with. Yes, I had blind spots, but I was a good team player and we all worked to complement other's strengths.
Time marches on, and I progress through a few companies -- established and start-ups -- never stopping my self-education. I took a couple of semesters of Calculus because I wanted to. I became an engineering manager (small teams), and director of engineering (the last start-up, a fiber-optics networking equipment manufacturer), while still keeping my design and architecture responsibilities. Our company was acquired in 1999 and I retired in 2001 with the title "Distinguished Engineer" and well over a dozen patents to my name. Now I'm back to playing with electronics in my garage.
So am I an "Engineer"? I'm certainly not a scientist, mathematician, or physicist, but my employers and colleagues seem to think that I am a pretty good engineer. I found myself unable to maintain interest in an academic setting, but found my calling and passion in the hands-on world and became a jack-of-many-trades, master of some.
So I think it's entirely possible to become an effective engineer without traditional formal training. I wouldn't recommend this path for everyone, but I think there is more than one way to reach your goals.