I'm sorry, IAMSCIENCE, but for you to think that you can be more than a noob with 18 months of training is simply false.

You can be skilled at one aspect of EVE with those skills, and that aspect will lock you into a single method of gameplay. Did you choose to become a master of Battleships? Maybe you fly a few smaller ships? Maybe you've learned to fly a single type of Capital Ship?

Regardless, someone who did the SAME THING AS YOU but started it a year before you did, well, he now flies something that your character's best efforts can't even get through the shields on. That's just a fact of how the game works.

It isn't "realistic". Train all you want in real life, you do not become IMMUNE to attack like you do in EVE. CCP let it go too far... there are too many multipliers at play...

Let me itemize it for you, so you can save some money:
1) get an EVE calculator...
2) plug in the skills you want to fit within 20 months of play
3) Check the best DPS you can make with any ship.
4) Check the best shield regen rate you can make with any ship.
5) Realization 1: You just became average after almost 2 years.
6) Plug in skills up to 30 months, and watch those DPS and shield regens double, triple, quadruple.
7) Realization 2: You might be worth something in over 2 years, if CCP doesn't change everything in over 2 years.
8) Realize that people who start right now will be MUCH CLOSER to you in 3 years than you will be to people who were 3 years in when you started.
9) Realization 3: EVE = Futility... unless you REALLY get into the "Role Playing" and like to listen to EVE radio and be part of the community.
10) Realization 4: To become average in a single video game, you spent $500.