If you want an internship it's going to be at a company which makes a product/service for the real world. So simulate that. You can learn the inner workings of

If you want an internship it's going to be at a company which makes a product/service for the real world. So simulate that. You can learn the inner workings of C as a separate thing. Build something which is live, ie not just a code base. You have AWS at your disposal. You have to write code, build it, deploy it, get a domain name, load balancing, get a cert, set up a database (maybe just use sqlite). There is a lot to building real things and the only way you can learn how to do it is building real things. If you want to put a job at a company on your resume... start an LLC, give yourself a job title, build the product, launch the product and put it on linkedin. A lot of this is messy, annoying, bang your head against the wall stuff. That's the real world.