First tip, Maya isn't just an animation package; although, animation is one of it's major features. Among it's other features are Modeling, Rendering, Dynamics and cloth.

Second tip, buy some books about Maya, or buy some points here at SM, and download some of the tutorials for beginners. The tutorials will take you through the areas, and teach you the workflow and the tool sets. Once you get a good working knowledge of the Maya applicaion, you can decide what fits you best, be it a modeling, animating ect...

Third tip, video tutorials are better than reading books. :p

Hope this helps and welcome to Simply Maya!