Hello

First thing i would suggest to you would be to master the most commonly used command and their options. Don't go the whole hog trying to learn all the commands. Just the basic ones like cd, mkdir, ls, cp, rm, mv , tar , gzip etc and ofcourse the apt configuration commands like aptitude.
I would also suggest that you learn some of the commands of the vi editor although you could continue some graphical editor if you prefer that. (but vi knowledge can come in useful for editing files in the case when the graphical server doesn't come up for some reason).
Keep reading lots of linux related magazines. Keep visiting forums incase of trouble like debianhelp .
One very useful thing you could do is decide for sometime to use only linux. Once you do that you'll find problems and then you can go to forums for solutions. Soon you'll have a knack for problem solving yourself.
Many tech schools don't really go out of their way to make us use linux due to some laziness (even mine didn't). So you have to do it inspite of that.
Lastly there are equivalent softwares for most softwares (except maybe some mechanical cad softwares). you can find them out and use them.
Best of luck for your endeavours. Get back if you need anything. I am always ready to mentor on some area i know even if slightly.