When I was a student and recent grad I did a bunch of work for other students, volunteer organizations, hobby projects, and very small businesses run by a frien

When I was a student and recent grad I did a bunch of work for other students, volunteer organizations, hobby projects, and very small businesses run by a friend of a friend. I'm suggesting this because in addition to practicing programming and running projects, it also exposes you to the most important part of being a professional developer: working with people, learning their problem, communicating across wildly different areas of expertise, and making a useful thing. Of course, that was all a long time ago, and these days I only make things for myself (budgeting app, cookbook, personal library tracker, an RSS to newsletter service... some are more polished than others but they all scratch an itch). I'd recommend that too.