There are multiple avenues to explore here. I just finished my master thesis in "design, use and interaction". However I firmly believe I know almost nothing about the field.
I wrote a rarther longwinded explanation that I just deleted. I tried to make the distiction that:
From this you have to consider if you are theoretically inclined, interested in user research, applied theory and psychology? Then UX and a master degree might be interesting.
Are you however interested in learning by expanding your understanding of graphic design towards a specific interface and mastering that interface to maximize usability. Then UI, web-design, learning to code and learning by doing and testing might be more useful.
In my opinion just doing research and watching videos on your own is pretty much a recipe for failure. UX is a huge field with diverging research that often contradicts with previous and current research. In essence, whatever you read on medium.com or similar websites is only the regurgitation of a small subset of research at best. UX is not about opinions and correctness, its about learning how to apply design through a meaningful process.
You might have heard that several people without a background in coding, graphic design, IT or psychology work with UX/UI. These non-field unicorns however are usually highly educated with a speciality within the humanities. Meaning that they have a specific understanding of how to find and gather applicable data about the users, their experience and how to apply that data towards the projects goals. In this sense graphic design is a sensibility towards UI and not towards UX. However learning UX and knowing GD is a powerful combination. Lastly learning coding is just an applied extension of GD/Ui and is less useful for UX.
Just my 2 cents and not necessarily helpful for your situation.