My task is to write a report on how I will achieve my dream job, from point A to B. I've got all the way up to university covered (or should I even bother that?) but I have no idea what's next. I really have no clue how the industry works and have pretty much no experience of a job. All my life I've just polished my skills without thinking about how to get my job. Now it seems I'm forced to do it. :|
I am aware that this is probably asked a lot so I've looked at sites like gamedev.net for help but I can't really find a good article about it. Maybe I should ask in their forum?
A quick background: The languages I know are mainly C, Perl, Ruby, SQL, PHP and Javascript. I am learning/experienced with Windows API, OpenGL, SDL, MySQL and libraries for common things like reading images (libpng, libjpeg), regexps and XML.
As a game programmer there are different areas like 3D, AI, network and so on but the way there are similar for each of these, right? In any case, my teacher said it would be okay to be a little open-ended and document all of these, whichever it will be I'm gonna be focused on.

So, assume I have lots of skills by the end of my studies. Where do I get a job? Who needs a game programmer? Who needs a programmer? I suspect I might even have to go to another country for job as a game programmer. I believe there's also a hefty amount of requirements regarding experience from working for getting into the gaming industry. Where do I get that? Start out small building applications for companies or work with web development?

Thinking about all this is giving me a headache.
Anyone who has worked as a programmer and can share their experience on how they got where the are today?