4 years ago, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the WiiU. Mario Maker is not so much a game as an engine for creating, sharing, and discovering platforming levels. Mario Maker quickly became my favorite game of all time and I logged over a thousand hours of playtime. My early levels weren't great but as I started sharing them online and talking with other makers, I quickly started learning about the fundamentals of level design. The deeper I got into Mario Maker, the more I wanted to learn about game design. 4 years later, I am pursuing an MFA in game design and have my first paid job in the industry. In this talk, I will show some of my Mario Maker levels (the good, the bad and the ugly) and explain what I learned from building them. I'll also talk about the Mario Maker community and different collaborative projects I was a part of like Super Discord Bros 3 and Two Years of Mario Maker (2YMM).