I was planning on going back to school to study data science, but everyone online is making it out like the tech field is dead and people are getting laid off and now you need eight year experience just to get an entry level gig. Worried I missed the boat on being able to get a good job in the field, should I just accept I'm stuck in retail?
Find what interests you. Like if you can make it through a python boot camp you probably have enough literacy to do a bootcamp for what you want to be doing. If you wanna be a l33t hax0r for the revolution like I said, python is a great starting point as you can write exploits and work with most of the machine learning libraries out there.
If this is a path you might be interested in check out bug bounties and CTF sites. https://www.youtube.com/@NahamSec