I was in a similar situation two years ago putting in 60+ hour weeks including holidays at an IT helpdesk job, and still felt like my student debt barely had a

I was in a similar situation two years ago putting in 60+ hour weeks including holidays at an IT helpdesk job, and still felt like my student debt barely had a dent to the point where my full repayment date would extend beyond 2030. My choice was to learn programming by doing challenges like HackerRank & save up to attend a coding bootcamp instead of making some numbers in some institutional bank account look slightly lower than actuarial tables would have predicted. It's a bit surprising to see most comments say to finish college where I think you would benefit more from upskilling in a trade program that has a much shorter time horizon than college to finish, where most employers do want some sort of accreditation beyond a GED instead of taking a chance on someone that's fully unproven. That said, non-traditional paths upwards exist but would likely require relocating from Indiana and networking through outreach to find what it would take to advance in a lateral career move, maybe at an industry conference or local group meetup.