Wormholes

This. You're too focused on max skills. You can run C2s just fine in a level 4 harbinger (check it's stats - no tank bonus per level means it tanks the same at level 1 as at level 5). Maxing out a Bhaalgorn for PVP is kind of a strange initial goal as well. Sure, it's a great ship for capital fights, but it's an expensive toy. There are much cheaper and more well-rounded options for getting your feet wet in PvP. Ships are tools, and each one fills a niche. Bigger ones aren't necessarily better. There's actually plenty of drawbacks in dragging around a battleship with your fleet, especially in wormhole space (mass limits).

It would take months, in many cases years, to completely max out every relevant skill for specific ship. Here's a good post about it.

The vast majority of ships you can start to use at level 4 (or level 3 even) and be nearly as effective as at level 5. Never wait to play the game because you don't have max skills. Sure, you might lose some ships. But it's more likely that you lost them to some other factor (piloting, experience, numbers, location...etc.) than because you had battlecruiser 4 instead of 5. And if you DO wait until you have max skills, you'll still lose ships anyway because you haven't built up that experience while training.

There are a few ships I wouldn't fly without level 5 skills. T2 logistics ships (they have cap stability issues with level 5) and T3 cruisers (because the subsytem trains are pretty short anyway) are some examples. But these are expensive ships that shouldn't be the first thing you fly. Come up with short and medium term goals that you can fit into a long term plan, allowing you to actually undock and do stuff while you are training. There's some good advice about t1 ships that can run sites in this thread. That would probably be a good place to start. Once you have a feeling for what you like to fly you will have a better idea of what to specialize in (ie. train level 5s for).

I do a similar thing for everything except for pulsars. Swap 1x EANM for an AAR. Swap AB for a cap booster. Swap scram for point. Swap nos for neut. For c2 work you don't have to turn on the AAR or booster unless you messed something up, and can be used very effectively for a skirmisher.