Being a beginner in Java SE development, I am quite interested in using Maven to manage and organize my project properly.
However, though I am more than willing to learn how to use it, I don't want to spend more time understanding Maven than actually coding. Yes, I know about Maven's perks and drawbacks, I am only worried about the learning curve.
This project will last 5 months, with a single developer — yet more people might have to maintain it later. I know larger projects are very successful with it, but is using Maven worth it in my case, or is it a waste of time?
I think that the time you will spend setting up Maven for a small project
will be as small as or possibly smaller than setting up Ant for a small project.
Maven is especially simple when the projects are small and don't have special requirements, so your use case would fit it perfectly.