Throughout university, I was constantly reminded that it really doesn’t matter much about your grades. What matters most are the side projects you do.

I did not listen. I would go to some of my classes, ignore the ones before 10 AM, and do the absolute bare minimum of work to get a C. Because of this: I’m nowhere near as experienced as I could be if I had taken an active interest in software development (in general) outside of class.

Do NOT rely on University to get you enough knowledge in order to go out and be a developer. You must supplement your learning with side projects. It hardly matters what these side projects are. They just have to be some kind of manifestation of progress in some way. You should try and make something that is presentable in some way and at the very least be able to talk about what you learned, how you engineered/designed the thing, and what you did well/poorly.

This expands into other elements of human nature. You have to create things. Engineers must build. If you can’t show the thing to someone, did you really make it? Did it mean anything?