Nigate
Hmm.. the two (climbing and holding on tighter) aren't mutually exclusive are they? When he holds on to something, is when to hold on tighter.
Get work experience. Get a part time (student) programmer job, internship, work on open source projects. At least, that is the advice I've been given (CS student).
> Become a better rock climber
Hold on tighter? :)
So my deal is: I'm a 23yo CS student, hopefully getting my masters degree summer 2012. I've been employed as a (part time) student programmer at a GTS* institute for almost 3 years now. Fantastic place to work for a student, as I'm not just a codemonkey stuck away in the basement: I actually get to talk to clients and users, get an equal say in discussions (technical/architectural as well as non-technical/design), work with anthropologists, the financial-guys etc. and get a fair amount of responsibility (depending on the project). Working part time as probably had a small (negative) effect on my grades, but I wouldn't trade what I've learned at this job for straight A's (and I hope that my future employees feel the same way).
My first "problem" is to figure out what I want to write my thesis on. I'm fairly certain it will be in the HCI field, but that is as close as it gets right now.
A bit more long-term: I feel like I have all the opportunities in world, all roads are open.. I just don't known which one to take. Two things I know though: 1) I don't want to end up as a non-technical project manager, only pushing paper and not writing a single line of code. On the other hand (2) I don't want to only be a programmer---I love developing, but I need other challenges too. I've considered staying at my current company (upgrade the job-title though), but on the other hand I feel like the world must be bigger than that, and that I need to see it. If I can get an idea I'll be burning 112% for, I'd like to do a startup.
It is frustrating to no end, not knowing what I want to accomplish.
*GTS institute: non-profit, government authorized research institute. Clients are private businesses and public (inter)national authorities.