I was lucky to get the 1-2 years of experience before graduation. I did my associates, got a call center job as a support agent, then worked my way up to their enterprise IT team before starting my bachelors.

It was fun that I got to use my actual job as my internship, although it pretty much was one since the pay was 50% below market. Then I padded my resume and got a job with a federal contractor for 3x that

Then Musk happened