First, please find a comfortable position. This is a long story.
While I was in engineering school at Columbia University, my parents (and I) expected that I would become a code monkey of some sort. There weren't a lot of choices for a major in SEAS or School of Engineering & Applied Sciences (or, as we liked to call it, South and East Asian Studies), so I stuck with Computer Science all the way.
It wasn't until half-way through junior year that I found out that, well, I just didn't like programming at all. I had come to a point when I just did not like thinking about coding, sitting in front of the computer coding, debugging while coding, finished coding, and then work on the next project coding. But it wasn't the coding itself that I didn't like; it was that it just wasn't something I was passionate about. I only did it for a letter grade and to pass my time, and not because I was stimulated by the material or had any desire to improve on my programming outside of getting a fairly decent GPA - and then getting the heck out of homework assignments.
I started writing reviews during sophomore year on a whim. I knew I had a fairly critical eye, but my English suuuuuuuucked. Every time I wrote an essay, I had a barrage of mistakes (grammar, style, you name it), and there's nothing like a sea of C's and B's to tell you that English probably isn't your thing. But I cared about video games (in some way or another), so I continued to write user reviews on GameSpot. You can see my my first review efforts here, so you can laugh at my expense:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/kata ... ?id=161433
But I pulled myself to get better. The time I was supposed to spend coding and "doing homework", I spent reviewing. I joined The Community Contributions Union where like-minded reviewers-to-be competed and critiques each other's work. I gave line-by-line critiques and took advice from others. I became leader of the union and worked on weekly issues of ReviewSpotting, which were posted in the general forums on GameSpot once the CCU got clout.
I read writing books - "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser and "A Guide To Style" by Strunk & White. I joined HonestGamers.com (HG), participated in their contests (some in which a fared terribly and some where I achieved my personal best), and soon became a freelance writer for them. I knew that writing, if not just game reviews, was something I could excel at, master, and be passionate about.
After I had my skills down, I needed some luck to break into the industry. I happened to know Holly Hester, president of the Figure Skating Club at the university, and out of all things, she was the sister of someone in the game writing industry - Mike Reilly. I got contact information, a phone number, an interview, and voila, I got a freelance position here. By that time, I had graduated and flittered from website to website, trying to figure out who to send my resume. Hardly any game website is based on the east coast, let alone New York City. So I waited while I continued to review and think about my life.
Then, I received word from Duke about an open editor position, and so I took a deep breathe, and after one day of pacing back and forth in my dad's living room, I made the leap. I contacted a U.C. Berkeley friend who was looking for a roommate, packed my bags, moved to Berkeley, and now I'm where I am today. This job isn't all roses - editing mistakes all day, playing bad video games at times, we get paid?, and getting swamped by new games, publishers that "forget" to send us their games, and a backload of screenshots and whatnot - but, you know what?, it's right for me. And at the end of the day, that's the best that I could ever hope for.