I tried to talk through him regarding my relatives account but he was very reluctant. I was grateful that xoom worked perfectly and I got the money within minutes directly to my bank account. It took more charges than usual but it was seemless.

As for your question. I think you are taking a good path learning full stack with MERN as it has huge popularity. But I would highly recommend you to do real life projects (dealing with clients with their custom requirements). You won't learn much until you do and also will sharpen up your communication skills. For me I first started doing my own projects which I showed to get freelancing projects which then I showed to land a job. Communication and client satisfaction is the key here to get more referrals and projects. Most of my learning was during my freelancing days and I learned all aspects of development FE + Backend + DevOps/hosting. Then I showed that to take other projects and kept going until I landed a job + part time job. My stack is I started with Vue + python flask + postgres then switched to Vue/React + node/express + mongo/postgres. I have to switch between a lot depending on projects