Dog and Pony got it right on the mark when he was talking about projects that interest you.

Having just finished a beginning and advanced class in Perl, we had to do a personal project for our final assignment. It was quite amazing to see the depth and lack of depth in the assignments.

Some people did programs because they were easy. Others did things that they were going to use in their work. Myself, I did a headline ripper, a regex trainer and an image mapper.

The point is, what you can't leave out of the equation is your imagination. Push yourself as much as you can. You'll be suprised what you can do.