re: Anyone work in IT?

The advice I usually give to people just starting out or are thinking about getting into IT is to be open to moving out of the area. At least temporarily. I can only speak from personal experience, most people I went to school with went somewhere pulling cable or doing help desk type stuff for a small company starting out.

I decided to move to Tennessee and go work for Dell. It was tech support stuff, the money was lousy and benefits were non existent, but I stuck it out for a year and then moved back home. Having that on my resume got me the job I'm still at almost 20 years later.

You may not have to do this depending on where you live, but opportunities were limited for me at the time and by doing what I did it allowed me to kind of get a jump start on my career.

As far as certs I'd say anything security related would be very valuable. The A+, NET+ may be good places to start like others have said to see if you really have any true interest for it.