[miguendes]

Even if you can't get an internship you can still learn from real world projects from big companies (or solo devs!) by checking their open source projects.

You won't have a mentor but you can still learn something.

What I suggest is to start with projects you are already familiar with. For example, I work with machine learning and python. I've been learning a lot by studying the code from pytorch, fastapi and other libraries used in this field.

Another great way to learn is to implement new features for projects you use. You can start by replicating existing ones. For example, you can find a PR that added a new feature, then try yourself implementing it and use the actual PR as a guide when you get stuck.