I’d also add go to excellent meetups with high quality talks. They attract good people, get talking and you’ll have 100 things to google when you get home!
Yes, getting involved not only behind your screen is really important.
They attract good peoples that give you tons of subjects to study, but most important, it makes you feel like you're part of a community and you're not doing all of this for nothing, or in a wrong way.
For that part, I think it's true whatever is the field in which you want to improve
They are for me too. Ask questions after the talk. Get the gist if you can even if you don’t grok all the details. Speakers often go too fast through stuff so I don’t take it personal if I don’t understand it all or any of it.
You're still a studient. It is not possible for you to have a good knowledge of software architecture because it is a really complex domain. If you show interest in it, read about it, go to conferences and ask questions, don't worry. Peoples will act cool with you.
Anyway, the only way to progress in dev/software archi/devops/etc is to put your ego aside and accept the fact a lot of peoples knows whay more than you. If you go speak with them and they treat you like garbage, this is their fault, not yours.
If you're really shy/impressed, maybe you can go with some friends and speak about it together. It will help you feel like you understood some things. Architecture is not filled only with youg peoples, and if you're a group of 20+ y/o speaking together, eventually the older ones will come and speak to you. then you can ask them what to read/watch to have deeper understanding
For that part, I think it's true whatever is the field in which you want to improve