Hello, this is the first time I'm posting on these forums and I was hoping to get some advice here. I'm close to graduating college soon and I have a somewhat clear idea of where I'd like to end up though I have no clue how to reach the place where I'd like to be...

I've been studying as a game design student for 4 years now and I slowly figured out that I like to tweak numbers, test them out, tweak numbers again, and then test them out again. In short, anything that needs balancing/tuning seem to be something that I want to do.

I also found out I like to make levels and adding the smaller details to levels E.G: When making small dungeons in the Elder Scrolls creation kit, I tend to focus on the small details of a room to make it look lived in if there was a story to the dungeon.

Being so close to graduation, I know my chances of getting hired are near zero in a triple A environment, yet at the same time, being in a financial crisis where your parents are also depending on you to make some money to help them out (as soon as you graduate) puts a lot of unneeded pressure to "get that job." I know I should probably pick up a book on programming in C++ or C# (despite being a painfully slow and easily frustrated programmer), but I'm just, well, I guess you can say I'm befuddled.

Aside from trying to get hired, my other course of action is considering graduate school though responses from them are outright rejection.

I have no idea what to do next, can any of you experienced guys (gender neutral context) give me advice on what's a good next step?