And the best method is not just dip and eat, but to hold the cookie in the milk for a bit so it absorbs the milk

Yes

I started in basic overnight support centers. Certs are big so getting basic ones in your field can be important, but they arent always easy or cheap to obtain. I started with real basic/low level certs that arent really favored by recruiters but are important for actually learning: Network+ and Server+ as my job was focused on websites and servers at the time. Eventually I moved on to Cloud focused certs for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud because by that time I was supporting those cloud platforms.