Going long on my education

If I have to decide between an ideal looking resume and actual skills, I choose skills. It has worked for me in the past, when I spent time actually learning how to program games and graphics instead of doing decently in college (The owner of a computer repair company told me to my face that "I make the other half of the class look good" when he asked my GPA and I told him "2.0". Brutal. (Never forget that a letter grade is only a proxy for understanding! Grades can be optimized for by cramming for tests, only studying things likely to be on a test, etc., but actual understanding is deeper and more important. If you insist on being with someone with a higher GPA than you, reconsider so you don't let a gem get away!) Carrying this attitude ultimately made me competent enough to do good work at Blizzard. (It's shocking that the distance between this and working on WoW could only be 5 years.)