Sure, or you could spend about 50 gold and shave a month or two off the process. The fact is training at the academy early gives you rapid skill gain, that gets you to the point were further skill gain from actually preforming your task is a much better prospect. That first 5-10% seems to be damn slow to happen out in the field.
How can you shave 2 months off of a 2 month process? It only took me about 2 months to get my atamara priest over 80%, I think.
