I`m in my second year at university studying Bachelor of Music performance. My advice to you is to work incredibly hard - practice as often as you can because getting a job is so INCREDIBLY competitive that if you don`t put in the hard yards while you`re learning at a tertiary level, you`ll be wasting your time and your teachers.
Believe in yourself - not believing that you`re good enough is a motivational killer!! You`re often a lot more competent at something than you think - you just have to learn how to guage this and to work on the things that you don`t feel entirely confident about. Be totally prepared to 115%. Everyone drops about 15% in a performance so prepare yourself above 100%
Play music that challenges you technically but also challenges you in a musical sense - ie. if you`re not very good at `playing out` to an audience, play something like Weber Concerto no 2 or Rossini (or something a little easier like Hurlstone 4 Characteristic Pieces) which force you to play like you`re an opera singer - dramatically. This teaches you a lot about performing instead of just playing. Does that make sense? And good luck.
