I don't know your career ambitions and goals, but there is a lot to be said for the technician/mechanic/custodian (not really sure of the best word) who solves one problem and moves on.
If you are at all inclined to system administration, your approach (notice problem, solve problem quickly and effectively, move on to next problem) can translate to solid work.
Now I speculate: As an employee, this will probably lead to low to medium pay positions - at least until you start seeing and solving larger scale problems. As a consultant, however, if you can get a stable of repeat clients, preferably under retainer, you may actually do quite well.
Back to reality. How to make progress? Find an OSS project or two that you quite like, preferably ones with really good communities. Go through the lists of current bugs. Find and fix those you can.
Heck, just start finding flaws in people's code and documentation on GitHub, fix, and issue pull requests.
You will get a reputation in the community as a reliable, dependable problem solver. After a while, reach out to people who seem both approachable and a step or two above you. Ask if you might be able to help them with a larger problem, one which they need assistance with and on which they would be willing to mentor you.
That's one approach, at least.
Your academic environment may also have code that needs maintaining, patching, repairing, refactoring. Food for thought.
Keep at it, the penny will drop, things will click into place.
If you are at all inclined to system administration, your approach (notice problem, solve problem quickly and effectively, move on to next problem) can translate to solid work.
Now I speculate: As an employee, this will probably lead to low to medium pay positions - at least until you start seeing and solving larger scale problems. As a consultant, however, if you can get a stable of repeat clients, preferably under retainer, you may actually do quite well.
Back to reality. How to make progress? Find an OSS project or two that you quite like, preferably ones with really good communities. Go through the lists of current bugs. Find and fix those you can.
Heck, just start finding flaws in people's code and documentation on GitHub, fix, and issue pull requests.
You will get a reputation in the community as a reliable, dependable problem solver. After a while, reach out to people who seem both approachable and a step or two above you. Ask if you might be able to help them with a larger problem, one which they need assistance with and on which they would be willing to mentor you.
That's one approach, at least.
Your academic environment may also have code that needs maintaining, patching, repairing, refactoring. Food for thought.
Keep at it, the penny will drop, things will click into place.