[Nil]

All awesome advice. If I may, here's some additions/reinforcement.

NETWORKING IS ESSENTIAL for finding work and project partners as well as learning more and expanding your expertise. Building on that, use LinkedIn. I know, it's boring, but tech recruiters will almost always ask for GitHub and/or LinkedIn profiles.

If your school/program has a Co-op Education Program, USE IT. You're guaranteed a semester or more of experience (depending on the length of the program), indispensable references, and resume material. Additionally, some high school programs and most university programs offer respectable pay, and if you don't fuck up too bad, you have a good chance at a job afterwards.

Learning how to use git effectively (and subversion and mercurial, if you're up to it) as well as common system-level package managers (e.g. pacman, aptitude) and dependency management systems like npm, cpan, or pypi will save you countless hours in development and debugging, plus it looks impressive.

Being a capable public speaker is paramount to success as a developer or computer scientist. I personally struggle with social anxiety and I'm extremely introverted, but I've been making an effort to teach classes (which is my next prospective job), do presentations, and generally expose myself to public speaking more.

Awesome stuff Inori! Thanks for sharing.
I'm glad you also emphasized networking. I watched a few too many classmates completely isolate themselves class after class, wishing they were more willing to open up an interact. If you network well enough, you make your life 10x easier (plus having friends is cool). Thanks for mentioning a co-op program. My school didn't have one but I remember you actually did one so I'm sure you understand the benefit.

Good point with package managers, and I'll add just basic proficiency in a CLI. I spent most of my college days too stubborn to leave a GUI and windows. Upon graduation, the job involved working in a Unix environment, which helps to know Bash. Learning git along with bash simultaneously is a time effective way to become accustomed to the CLI and work with version control.

Lastly, I'm glad to hear you understand the importance of effective communication skills. Keep at it and before you know it, you will barely remember the days where it was a struggle in front of people. (I'm assuming you're possibly chasing a master's degree?)

I would relocate but unable to currently thus why I'm only left with warehouse/customer service-like jobs. I admit that looking at the requirements/qualifications do kind of 'scare' me away. I'll keep that in mind next time.

Thank you both for your inputs.

Understandable. And being scared of the qualifications is very normal. Sometimes they're there to scare people away actually. In a way, deter people who aren't confident or ambitious enough to just go for it. It won't hurt to just go for it sometimes, just be honest with what you know and don't know.

@Exiled
Many of my colleagues did the same thing. It is tough especially if you're going in without previous knowledge in programming. I had to sacrifice a lot to make sure I graduated (like a social life), but that's a decision you'll have to make. I sometimes feel like I missed out on many of the luxuries of college and fond memories and relationships, but at the end of the day you're going there to learn and get a degree. Best of luck in whatever field you pursue next.