I'm ending my third term in a few weeks so I have some spare time coming up. I'd like to spend it seriously digging into programming. My problem: I'm not sure which language to begin with. Just to be clear, I don't want to start a language-y-compared-to-language-z discussion. There are a some other issues that play a major role.

In my 5th term I'm going to be participating in a major practical course which will include either Java or C programming. It will take a lot of time and energy, as I found out while talking to a few students who passed the final exams (only 15% pass on their first try). Which practical course I will take is randomly decided.

My skills so far are the absolute basics of Java and C programming. I know the different data types and how to handle them, objects, pointers, thread programming, etc. All of that is on a very low level, though.

My question now is, what language should I start seriously practicing?

• Java:
  I did my first GUIs with this language. I'm familiar with Eclipse but I need a project to work on (which I don't have) to really keep me pushing. Besides that, I don't think it would help me if I have to do C in a year.

• C:
  As with Java, I can't think of a personal project to keep me working and keep me interested in programming. If I get assigned to Java in a year, this wouldn't give me any advantages either, would it? (No objects, etc.)

• Objective-C:
  I recently came up with this idea. I have a Mac; I'm not really familiar with Xcode but I have one or two personal projects I'd like to work on. Further, I would be working with objects (as in Java) and C language constructs which would both be great for this practical course in a year.

What do you think I should begin with? Should I just stick to Java and hope for the best, force myself through C or start (nearly) completely from the beginning with Objective C?

Maybe you folks could give me some good advice that would stop me from switching from one language to the next?