Portfolios

So, as a student, and a fairly new member to the art and design community, I thought it would be appropriate to post the frustrations of a designer trying to get freelance jobs while trying to expand a portfolio at the same time. I'm hoping that the 2 followers I have at the moment will magically multiply to the power of 500 so maybe somebody would run across this that can give me advice.

While being a student I get great feedback not only from my professors, but my fellow students as well. This is very helpful because you get to see your work from a different perspective. Every now and then I get the opportunity to create some really great pieces that would go great in a portfolio, but more often than not, most of the projects are pretty silly. Even though they turn out pretty good, I'm a little embarrassed to include them in the portfolio because of the context.

My ideal projects for a portfolio would be real world projects for real world clients, where they can vouch the experience that they had working with me and the outcome of their project. But here's the catch: how do you get a client without a decent portfolio? how do you get a decent portfolio without having clients to work with?