[Will]

Re: not working in tech support. It would be good to realize that there are many different levels of tech support, some that are intolerable, some that are actually quite nice. If you're doing support for the general public, it is terrible, and your job will consist of asking a bunch of questions to irate customers, straight out of a three ring binder of problems; you will not think, and be bored to death, and will get no reward from it. Internal IT is better, since you are given more leeway in solving issues that come up. And if you manage to snag a higher-level position, the work *can* be more rewarding. It might also be complete hell. So it's really hit or miss, but I don't think it is a bad thing to experience, personally. I did it two summers ago, at a corporate HQ, as an intern, and made $12/hour (this is about par for internships; full time employees would be salaried at around $35k-45k, plus benefits).

My current work is as a software developer, which could still be considered in IT, maybe. I'm still at an internship level, so I get $18/hour, but my employers are very flexible with how I work those hours. The only real requirement is I can put down a maximum of 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week on the timesheet. If I choose to come in on a weekend and just have a marathon coding session and end up working for 40 hours, I can stay home all week, I just have to fill in 8 hours for each of those weekdays. Most places will NOT be like this, however. But they do exist if that's what you're looking for.

My education is overkill for most work that is considered IT (as opposed to industrial software dev). I am a semester away from completing a Master of Science degree in Computer Science, and I finished by Bachelor last winter. If you want to get into IT, probably the quickest route that would still allow you to go for better opportunities later is to get an Associate degree, and look at grabbing a few certs in a specific field (e.g. network infrastructure). From there, you can get a Bachelor from a lot of different good schools long-distance, a few classes at a time. The difference between Associate and Bachelor degrees in payscale is very worthwhile. But the one thing to remember throughout all of it is, you HAVE to love what you're studying. Otherwise, it will not work out. If you find something that you can love, you are set, but I have seen far too many people who are just in it for the cash, and they drop out fairly quickly.