Susan,
First of all.... You already know how Patience, persistance, and Practice are the key to learning new thing on the guitar.
These scale patterns will seem incomprehensible on first approach. However, once you learn these patterns, you can transpose (change the key of a song) to another key with very little problems. You simply move those patterns up or down the neck and you change keys. This is critical to playing with other people. Which is where the most fun can be found.
It is a large task to get all these patterns down, but in the end it is much simpler way to transpose a song (so it isn't to high or low for the vocalist or lead instrument to preform). As you start to play with other people this will be a huge advantage over piano, wood winds, and most other instruments. For those instruments you have to learn a diffrent fingering for each change of key. There are 12 possible keys all of which can be Major, Minor, chromatic, not to mention Modes or Blues Scales. DIFFRENT PATTERNS FOR EACH KEY means that those other instruments have to completly change their fingering to play in another key. On the neck of a guitar, many of scales are acheived by simply moving the scale pattern up or down a few frets. This may be beyond your ablity now, but that will change as your finger and brain intergrate these patterns.
Practice the patterns, learn the patterns, apply the patterns, and finally soar on the patterns. That is how I started to learn how to play lead guitar. I will never master that entire subject, it is too vast and I am too old. You, on the other hand, are young and that is the biggest advantage when it comes to using all the diffrent scales to your advantage. I envy your advatage!!
Once again it comes down to practice, patience, and persistance. In fact patience, practice and persistance will be your guide as long as you seek to improve your ablities on guitar.
For the immediate future, I would suggest you work on understanding those basic scale patterns. Learn where all the scale degrees are located. The position of the # 1 note in that scale pattern is how to determine what key you are playing in. This unlocks the question of how all these scales make sense when you try to play music with other people. This is all vital for your futrue as a guitarist.
In other words once again you already know the secret key to this knowledge..... KEEP DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
Patience, Persistance, and Practice.
Captcha is a total pain in the........