You're about to finish your college education

You're about to finish your college education. If you think you're done learning, think again. You've just finished the base that allows you to continue learning. Especially in this always-changing industry, you will always be learning new things: new platforms, new APIs, new languages, new approaches, new styles, new everything. Don't think for a moment you can learn a couple of things and then stick to them without learning anything new. It's great to be confident in your skills, but if I catch a whiff that the candidate is set in his ways and is not interested in learning anything new, it's "hasta la vista, baby." So go out and learn new things. I always like to be reading a technical book on things directly applicable to what I do at work, and maybe some on things that are more off-the-wall. In addition, I recommend reading trade magazines (Game Developer Magazine, Software Development, C/C++ Users Journal, etc), conference journals (GDC, Siggraph, ACM), web sites (Gamasutra, Flipcode, GameDev.net), mailing lists (gd-algorithms, sweng-gamedev, gd-general), and just about anything you can get your hands on. Don't be afraid to look at open source projects (Nebula Device, Crystal Space), figure out how they do things, and even participate in their development. The book The Pragmatic Programmer recommends learning one new computer language every year. It might be a bit of overkill, but it's certainly not a bad idea. Even if you're not planning on using Smalltalk or Ruby, it can only broaden your skillset and give you new perspectives on things. Learn about garbage collection, dynamic languages, etc. Of course, make sure you have the basics covered and you have a good grasp of C and C++ before you branch into other languages. Plays games.