I would say it depends what sort of direction are you planning to go:
Web development, data analysis/science, general purpose scripting/engineering, something else?
One idea (which I am actually also considering myself, to play around with 
) could be to try and reproduce the visualization from this post: Coronavirus: when do we reach the bottom of the dip? - #2715 by Wolverine.
From scratch.
That would entail:
- Finding the data source online, fetching it and processing
- Prepare the data for the viz
- Build the visualization
- Build the web app to host it, and make it interactive (e.g. with some filters for the data at the back)
In essence, find a topic you are passionate about and try to create something presentable (people love visuals).
Because it will keep your drive to complete it up a bit longer than some “obligatory” project you might get at the uni/course. 
Bonus points: If you aim to get into financial/economics industry, this idea above could win you some.
Personal (tiny) example - a friend wanted to reduce the pain of checking each individual stock at https://www.stock2own.com/, for some “value-based” metrics.
We discussed a bit and I decided to make him (us) a simple screener on top of it.
A couple of days later, ended up with this: https://dbucar.shinyapps.io/s2oscreener.
Halted for now, and could use some more work to “prettify” and make some nicer visuals; but it serves the purpose.