Ask HN: How to become a good hacker?

Hello HN, I'm a newcomer living in Portugal and I'm currently studying computer science. Although I'm learning a lot and enjoying some of the courses, I feel that I'm somehow wasting my time here.

So since January I've decided to become a hacker. I started reading and learning all that I could find about technologies people use, ruby, htm5, node.js, et cetera.

But what should I do next? Should I keep learning and start working on my own projects? should I join an existing project? Or even worst: should I just sit back and relax?

Because the problem is that I have the soul and knowledge of a hacker, but I have nothing to put my hands on.

Thanks HN for being an amazing inspiration!