I just got to the part of the main story where you fight and kill your first dragon. Up to that point, I've been wondering around, doing some minor quests.

I'm an Argonian (dragonborn!) mage, and it's been fun. With being able to dual wield spells, or dual cast the same spell for greater effect, mages are much more fun than in Oblivion. I love reanimating the bodies of my recently slain foes and sending them after their comerades. It's a neat touch that you have to case Elemental atronoch spells on the corresponding element.

I just have to try to find ways to up some of the less used magic schools, such as illusion. Does spamming light spells work? I also like transmuting iron into silver, into gold. I could make a decent living just doing that.

Any cool spell combos I should know about?

One thing I miss is the ability to create your own spells so that you can creat some "in-between" spells while you increase your magicka.

Light is now part of alteration, if you want to quickly level illusion: keep spammifying muffle.

Destruction magic might be a bit more effort than its worth. I mean, its effective and all but with illusion and conjuration you will kick some major butt. Have a fear spell on hand to deal with pesky bears and stuff and once you can use invisiblity, anyone who gets too close will be sent running while you conjure a dremora, turn invisible and watch.

I skipped over restoration in my mage build simply because I never needed to heal. I specialized in destruction too, every mage should but I could have done without it.

Muffle works great for leveling illusion, hes right. Use soul trap on dead bodies for Conjuration and summon frost atronaches on expert difficulty while standing in a narrow corridor they cannot enter and attack them to level destruction.

Light spells are alteration, so that wouldn't level illusion.

I do believe casting muffle in towns is a good way to level illusion. Or casting the low spell Fear on everything until you can use muffle.

Conjuration's the easiest, just spam Soul Trap on a corpse until your eyes bleed.

Destruction and Conjuration can be levelled together using the rune spells. Summon your atronach on an opposing elemental rune and then throw a spell at it. Boom.

Turn undead in a drauger cave for restoration, or the classic 'let the wolves hit you' method.