Skill progression has been changed a few version ago, to make it considerably more difficult. The idea is for someone to go from 0 to 100 in 3 years of intensive regular training... You will need depending on your start potentially weeks and weeks of training. Or even months... If you are looking for the starlets arc, either get a dancer, or start in June and spend the summer training (I personally have done it with a nerd, but spent literally 4 months doing little else than training at home, running, visiting the gym and dancing lessons) . Otherwise you will miss it (At the moment if you do not join by mid October, the arc is gone). Alternatively, reduce the game difficulty as it increases greatly the skill progression.