Spanish is not a foreign language in the United States. It's the second most spoken language in the country, with tens of millions of speakers, its own television, radio, newspapers and music, and daily presence in most major cities. If you're learning Spanish here, your biggest advantage is one most learners never use.
The classroom problem
Most Americans who study Spanish do it at school and leave able to conjugate and unable to speak. Years of grammar, almost no conversation, and a lasting sense that they "did Spanish" and it didn't take.
That isn't a failure of ability. School Spanish is built around written exams, and speaking is the one skill an exam can't easily test. The gap between what you know and what you can say is the thing to close, and it closes faster than people expect — because the knowledge is already there.
Which Spanish to learn
A reasonable question with a practical answer: whatever is spoken where you are. In most of the United States that means Mexican Spanish, though Miami leans Cuban and the north-east has strong Puerto Rican and Dominican communities.
The differences are smaller than learners fear — mostly vocabulary and accent, not grammar. A Spanish speaker from anywhere will understand you. But if you can choose, choose the one you'll actually hear.
The advantage you're not using
You can watch the news in Spanish tonight. You can change your phone's language. There are podcasts, radio stations and shows made for native speakers rather than learners, and there are probably people within a mile of you who'd rather speak Spanish.
What stops most learners isn't opportunity — it's the discomfort of being bad at something in public. Lessons are where you get bad at it privately first, with someone correcting you, until using it outside stops feeling like an ordeal.
What a tutor adds that immersion doesn't
Exposure makes you understand. It doesn't make you speak, and it doesn't correct you — native speakers are polite and let errors through, so you can repeat the same mistake for years without being told.
A lesson does the opposite. Someone makes you talk, interrupts, and tells you what you just got wrong. An hour a week of that alongside the exposure you already have moves faster than either alone.