[maliker]

Don't worry!

I worked with a couple people right out of top 10 CS programs in the USA. One of them was way faster at writing good code than the rest, even people who went through the same program he did. I asked him how he got so good, and he told me he had to take a year off after school to care for a relative, and in his spare time he built web apps for fun. It gave him a great knowledge of operating systems, databases, networking, etc. And he said even more importantly it taught him how to just get into the code and build things.

I don't think you have to take time off to hack more. Grab a job, get paid to build things, and soon you'll see your skills getting better and better. You're already thinking hard about how to improve, and that's a critical first step that a lot of people never take.