I know this is difficult, but is it doable? I've heard people say you can only understand it with a college course...

I know this is difficult, but is it doable? I've heard people say you can only understand it with a college course. Is this true?

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For the moral consciousness itself, however, its moral attitude does not mean that consciousness therein develops its own proper notion and makes this its object. It has no consciousness of this opposition either as regards the form or the content thereof; the elements composing this opposition it does not relate and compare with one another, but goes forward on its own course of development, without being the connecting principle of those moments. For it is only aware of the essence pure and simple, i.e. the object so far as this is duty, so far as this is an abstract object of its pure consciousness — in other words, it is only aware of this object as pure knowledge or as itself. Its procedure is thus merely that of thinking, not conceiving, is by way of thoughts not notions. Consequently it does not yet find the object of its actual consciousness transparently clear to itself; it is not the absolute notion, which alone grasps otherness as such, its absolute opposite, as its very self. Its own reality, as well as all objective reality, no doubt is held to be something unessential; but its freedom is that of pure thought, in opposition to which, therefore, nature has likewise arisen as something equally free. Because both are found in like manner within it-both the freedom which belongs to [external] being and the inclusion of this existence within consciousness — its object comes to be an existing object, which is at the same time merely a thought-product. In the last phase of its attitude or point of view, the content is essentially so affirmed that its being has the character of something presented, and this union of being and thinking is expressed as what in fact it is, viz.-Imagining (Vorstellen).

I unironically find Plato more difficult and opaque.

If you don't know the german langauge in and out, don't even bother

Honestly, Heidegger is way worse.

Why?

Damn. I know a little but not enough to read this in German.

Plato's dialogues sound casual and easy do follow but it's hard to get what is Socrates or Plato endgame, or big picture (take a work like Sophist, for example), which I guess is understandable since the whole point is the dialectic and construction involved in the path itself; whereas Hegel is quite clear on where he wants to you to go and what he is trying to achieve, even though the middle of it is muddy.

Read his lectures first.

I'll be honest, even a college course didn't help me much with the Phenomenology. I would advise that you wait to read the preface, as it was written after the book was completed. Otherwise, just go for it, bro.