As a student it is always great to learn new things, I recommend developing a theme from scratch and buying a professional WordPress theme. In doing so, you can see the difference in the amount of work that goes into building a professional theme vs the built-in themes.

This will also allow you to possibly learn from it to increase your web development skills when you start building themes from scratch or eventually build your own professional themes and sell them. You will know the quality level you need to be able to reach in order to build sites that are at the professional grade level vs amateur and possibly make a nice income from doing so if you choose too.

what is your goal?

a) just improve coding skills >> code from scratch b) have a website up and running >> use a wp theme

personal note: I dont really get "lack of uniqueness" - in terms of features or just visual appearance?

Or you can start building with the framework like studiopress.

I'd build something new for the sake of learning more during the process. I'd also suggest expanding your horizons beyond WordPress to other CMS' and static site generators.

Well I guess one of you personal challenges is to see if you can make a more unique Wordpress template.

Though I think making your own site from raw also give you learning opportunities.

Content > layout. However, write your own and blog about the process as you code it. Best of both worlds.

Make a website from scratch and then turn it into a wordpress theme.

Make your own unique Wordpress theme.