[man_bear_pig]

thomas jefferson high? i have many successful friends who went to that school!

this is a great first start. i agree with mcallan83. if there is a way to start mobile first then web, that's where i would head. i'm going through tons of trouble trying to now strip out all poorly coded responsive design into mobile friendly view then stripping out a lot then creating responsive design again. www.reppio.com (you can see that my web is in pretty good shape. and now spending bunch of money to make mobile looking good!!!

plus, the way you should think for the foreseeable future (chance is that you won't create a legit business over the next 3-4 years because you have a ton of other skills to learn). however, during those years it's going to be all mobile/tablet first for most industries and for most people.

another advice i can give you is not go to just one type of forum to seek advice (e.g. hacker news has a lot of "hackers." but there may be other types of people you want to hit up. diversity/asking people you'd never do business with or hang out with or really cared much about, you should learn design, customer psychology, all of these things by constantly asking for feedback from a variety of people. you'd be amazed at how many people at cafes to classmates will give you the 5 min you need to learn something new about how different people are in the way they think.

lastly, i would study up on design trends as much as i would study code. for example, flat design with color palattes and fonts that match with those colors and theme---> branding is really hard to get but very important. most people don't get it so better to start early because it'll help you in the way you design, the way you learn to tell your story and probably the way you structure the pages.