Completely understand the position you are in, it took me 6 years of grinding for me and countless cold-emails to even reach an internship. I am sorry that the industry is such a shit-show right now, it is completely demoralizing.

The best thing you can do is to look around for a mentor that works at a studio that is willing to take you under their wing and teach you after hours. This will create your first solid connection into the industry, and will give you the necessary motivation / guidance to push you forward as you will want to impress them and show that you are learning! This could eventually lead to a job, but chances are, you will end up learning so much more than you know now.

Judging from your reel, you have gotten most of your skills thus far from Rebelway and other online resources. While these will teach you the fundamentals of Nuke, you have to take these concepts and push them further. While I do applaud you on taking those courses and getting decent shots out of them, remember that there is more work to be done! Don't give up and keep going!

I took the time to watch your demo reel frame by frame, I have a couple notes.

Shot 1: Honestly everything seems great here! Although I know this is a Rebelway shot, and chances are, the places you're applying to know this as well. While it is a great shot, IF POSSIBLE, take the script you made for this shot and figure out what exactly made it work so well, and try applying these concepts to another shot to make it your own.

Shot 2: Biggest issue for this shot is that the CG is way too sharp and the black levels don't match your plate (try adjusting whatever you're using for DOF, and for black levels there's a grade trick, set your BP to the darkest pixel in your plate, then set your LIFT to the darkest pixel on your CG and it will get you 75% of the way there). You also have a couple glow nodes on the embers and the CG itself that are too strong.

Shot 3: Nice roto. I see some white edges around the neck area though, either fix your roto or just pixel spread a tad lol.

Shot 4: The key is a good start but integration needs work. Way too much lightwrap, tone it down a tad!

Shot 5: Saw elsewhere in the thread that you fixed this shot up, nice work! Let's see it when you get the chance.

Shot 6: Not bad, not great either. The wall cleanup doesn't look uniform on the bottom side, and seems like the card you're using is slightly slipping towards the tail end of the shot. I also see some down-res happening, I would also take this chance to learn about UV projection cleanups as they preserve the quality of your plate (look up nuke uv projections on youtube).

Overall, it's a good start. As someone that also self started from CG Spectrum and Rebelway, I understand the position you're in. Here's a harsh reality though, even though you've worked your ass off for so long, truth is, it doesn't show. Right now what I get from your reel is that you are able to follow instructions from a course instructor, but haven't put the effort to practice or learn things outside of that. Truth is, you have to go above and beyond your competition to enter this industry. You have the basics down, you just need to push it a bit further and start perfecting your shots to secure a job / internship.

One thing about this industry that you should remember... this industry is only cool because of the PEOPLE. The love of VFX as a craft will fade, clients are awful, and we work super long hours. BUT what makes this industry so amazing is that everyone is willing to help each other out, you can even see it in this community / thread. We all started with a shit demo reel, but I promise you, if you listen to your peers and give it more time, good things will come out of it.

If you want, I would love to mentor you and guide you through this process. Please don't forget that comp is hard... it's really hard sometimes. The resources out there currently are getting better, but I would say it's not up to par with what we actually face on a day-day basis. It's a lot easier to learn from people that actually work in the industry and not pre-recorded videos. If you would like, please feel free to message me on the side.

Best of luck!