For those aspiring toward a career in software interaction deign and user experience design, as I did when I was in ID school, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have even entered school. Instead, I would have gotten a job doing ANYTHING, even work for dirt cheap, at a shop developing software. Even if I was earning next to nothing, that would still be better than the thousands I spent on school and I’d have earned much more valuable real world experience.
In the software interaction and ux design worlds, nothing is more valuable than real world experience. In all of the jobs I’ve interviewed for, no one has ever asked to look at my portfolio.