| I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere just on spec; One can do this by couchsurfing. That was my technique, back when I was in your position. It needn't be expensive. Just don't wear out your welcome by staying on any particular couch for more than a week or so. The fact that you're in Santa Cruz, though, makes me wonder if even the couch is strictly necessary. Your projects sound just fine. (If that word sounds too highfalutin, call them "hacks" or "scripts". Whatever.) Put one or more of them on Github if you can. I have interviewed CS majors with good GPAs who had literally never built anything that they weren't assigned to build for a class, who had (e.g.) never deployed a page live on the web. The skills and disciplines required to build and ship things are largely orthogonal to what they teach in undergraduate school - it's like the difference between being an art historian and painting a portrait, or between having a Ph.D. in linguistics and delivering a lecture in Hungarian - so any chance you have to demonstrate them, even at small scale, adds depth to your qualifications. I have no hiring authority at the moment (and am on the wrong coast, alas for both of us) but I'll give you this link to my colleagues: http://www.acquia.com/careers/acquia-u There's still plenty of work for Drupal developers, and PHP programmers in general, if you have (or can develop) the personality to deal with it. You will probably need a sense of humor. ;) It's not a great job for perfectionists. But it is a job where a little knowledge can go a long way. If you learn how to analyze queries and create strategic indices in MySQL, for example, people will think you're some species of wizard. The wizard bar is low. Think of something to build yourself. It's a good thing to practice doing. Start small and develop the habit. Heed the words of Ira Glass: http://youtu.be/BI23U7U2aUY |