I totally agree with Brian: writing software is cool, but creating the hardware it's going to run on from scratch is way better!
As a student I'm actually a little, how to put it? Financially-challenged, when it comes to buying the hardware, so I end up working with emulators and simulators most of the time, which is why I appreciate Microsoft's Robotics Studio and its 3D simulator so much.
If you're interested by all this and you haven't tried it, I strongly recommend that you do. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do, you'll have a hard time letting it down 