The more advanced things in poser such as the material room, set up room, hair room are completely beyond me.  So far as the cloth room goes, I can do the basics for dynamic clothing.  In Poser 6 I can do lights to a degree where I can usually get what I want for lighting in my scene.  I have Poser Pro 2010 and from what I understand the lights in there are completely different. I haven't installed it yet, so I haven't tried them out.

I've been using Poser since about spring 2004 and I've accepted that I'll never be a master of anything in Poser.

I've tried my hand at texturing, but I can't wrap my head around trying to match up created designs for waist belts, dress straps, patterns etc on flat patterns so that everything is lined up nicely when applied inside Poser.  Trial and error is just too tedious for me and I find texturing more a lesson in frustration than enjoyable.

I love to build and construct things, but the interface of the modeling programs I've looked at could just as well be the control panel of a 747 for all the sense they make to me. Again, trial and error style learning doesn't work for me.

So my "getting over being a newbie" involved working on my image composition / placement / effects.  And once I get some motivation to create again, I'll keep on working on that.  My next goal is to work on making my images "softer" so that they don't look so hard and like "cut and paste" efforts IE: load this, place it here, load that, place it there....render.  And I think that only comes with learning how to do more post work to incorporate detail and some type of style into the image.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi