hi
-i think you should learn maya at your own pace, and especially in the beginning don't be to hard on yourself when you compare your work with that of another, most of the times people who post here are doing it much longer and some even do it as a dayjob( lucky bastards:p ).
-also there are people who say that the object that they've posted is their first thing they ever made in maya. in most of these cases people are lying about this, because when i and i think most people here got started with maya they didn't get those clean topologies. if they lie to themselves i personally don't care but i think it could discourage other people who are just getting started perhaps maybe you to.
-don't try something to difficult in the beginning, start your first project for instance with the bouncing ball==> first create a sphere, then texture the sphere and then animate the sphere.
try to practise everything on the same level. when you've become an intermediate experienced modeler try to reach the same expirience at texturing, animating, lighting etcetera.
hope this helped