Just before the pandemic I had a trip to Mexico City planned and spent a couple months learning Spanish, and I like many others took 3 years of Spanish in high

Just before the pandemic I had a trip to Mexico City planned and spent a couple months learning Spanish, and I like many others took 3 years of Spanish in high school, but that was over 10 years ago I went on the trip and while it helped a little, in conversation it was practically useless outside of the very basics. I dropped Duolingo and took an intensive 3 month course of Spanish with a minimum courseload minimum 2-3 hours a day because there was nothing else to do. I changed all media I consume to Spanish (music, news, shows, books, etc) I learned more in those 3 months than all of my high school classes and any amount of Duolingo could have helped me. Now it's 3 years later and I have spent a cumulative 1.5 years of time as a digital nomad in Spanish speaking countries and most consider my Spanish to not necessarily be native fluent, but conversationally fluent in that I can understand jokes, ask for whatever I need, etc. I'd personally only recommend Duolingo for maybe vocabulary, but if you really want to learn you need to immerse and actually talk with people frequently, as in basically daily. You need to make those stupid mistakes that native speakers may giggle at and then correct you.