Just do the heroic bosses you can, no need to get obsessed with full clears until your geared. If you can get a few bosses on clear everyday plus UK you'll get your gear faster, and be able to do full clears.
As for failure, during my raf period I got one group of a warlock and 2 priests to 50, and a 5 shaman group to 45. That's all in 90 days, a lot less than everyone else who got 5 groups to 60 or so it seems. Maybe it had to do with me just starting, not sure.
With my lock priest crew I got camped by a single rogue, my level over and over again. My pvp skills sucked, needed more macros but not sure what. I'm thinking pvp on my boxed teams isn't going to be a priority, because to me its no fun getting beat up all the time.