http://www.animation-addicts.com/2012/09/17/making-it/
"Long ago, when I went to school for traditional animation, it was expected you could/would spend 3 to 5 years either in the clean-up department, then work up to the breakdown inbetweener ranks, before become a fully fledged feature animator."
Take the time you need and stay determined!
Also, might be worth thinking about the equivalent of clean up and inbetweener in a 3D industry. How about aiming for a tv show as a starter?
Lots of work, working with the same characters throughout a show, high output rate... Sounds good to me.
Might not necessarily be all demoreel quality animation you'll be doing, but after a while you'll surely know how to animate quickly with a solid quality and have a bag full of tricks, plugins, are used to a studio environment and whatnot. I think this might be a possible way for a student or recent alumni for easing into the industry.
Or you could always just go all in:
take care
c
