"Miyazaki wouldn't tell you nuthin' that ain't true"

"I give young people this advice because jumping into the industry four years early isn't going to help them become full animators any faster. Once your in the industry, you'll be overwhelmed with work and you won't have any time to study or learn for yourself.
One of the things about drawing is that, if you put in serious effort, you will be good at it, at least to a certain extent. But that's all the more reason to study a variety of things that interest you while you have the time, before you enter the professional world, in order to develop and solidify such fundamentals as your own viewpoint and way of thinking.
If you don't do this, your life will be treated as just another disposable product. In the animation business, most people spend a long time working at the bottom of the organizational ladder. You usually have to endure a lengthy apprenticeship period, waiting patiently for the chance to someday demonstrate what you can do. But the opportunity to demonstrate what you can do only comes along once in a while, so unless you are extraordinarily lucky, you'll probably never make it.
To endure something is obviously exhausting and agonizing. But at the same time, you must also continue to hold what you regard as important close to your heart and to nurture it. Should you relinquish what you truly hold dear, the only path left to you will be that of a pencil-pusher...the type of animator whose sense of self-worth is determined by the numerical amount of his earnings, or who cycles between joy and despair over the high or low ratings his work receives.
It is all well and good to love animation, but I always counsel people, it is best not to think of entering this business lightly. Animation is still a very new field, and there are only a few works in existence that we can really call classics. But it is essential to watch as many of these classics as possible. And it is also essential to be interested in subjects that have traditions going back hundreds of years, and to broaden your own knowledge. In exerting yourself to this end, you will find that you develop something truly all your own."


taken from a section of "Starting Point :1979~1996 Hayao Miyazaki"

P.S. - Though Miyazaki-san is talking about animation, his wisdom can be applied to any field. Don't get caught in the tide of bullshit, stay hype!