I guess I'm really special for my first level not being terrible. My first level was completed when I was 15, so I guess you'd expect for it to not be too shabby. I think why levelmakers first levels are usually terrible is that they create them when they are very young. When we are kids we don't understand why something is good, nor care about it looking good. I think when I was very young, JCS crashed every time I opened it.

Slightly off-topic: Good levelmaking is not practice in the traditional sense. It's about understanding gameplay theory, tilesets and creativity then applying it to levels. If you don't think about that, it's likely to come out bad or generic (mediocre). It's why I don't give new levelmakers higher ratings than usual. It's simply that my way of thinking is if you point out the flaws and think about them sooner, you can improve faster. It doesn't matter that it's bad, because you've learned from them.

People take judging skills too personally. I generally expect I'm going to be bad at doing something for the first time, but I don't feel bad for it. Too many people think that because you did something bad (or someone else said) means that you shouldn't try anymore. Sometimes you just don't realise flaws/what to improve on until it's pointed out. The defeatist mentality starts to really annoy me for a while.

About your levels....uuuuhh. Judging from the preview they don't look impressive (from an eyecandy and gameplay view), to be honest. And electric castle isn't yours (as you said) and looks like a very simple edit. I'll check them out properly sometime.