Positive Trail: Machine learning endeavour: At the finish line

So I'm finally at a point where I can say I'm done with my Machine Learning endeavour that I started about 19 months ago. Of course, learning is a lifelong process, but getting to the finish line of what seemed to be a far-fetched goal sometime back, feels incredibly sweet.

Some quick statistics:

Number of courses completed: 6
Number of courses partially completed: 3
Number of programming assignments: 32

Natural Language Processing: 3
Machine Learning: 8
Probabilistic Graphical models :9
Neural Networks for Machine Learning: 4
Computing for Data Analysis: 2
Data Analysis: 2
Design and Analysis of Algorithms: 4

Number of Kaggle competitions entered: 4

Notable rankings:

72/1158 in the Digit Recognition competition.
125/557 in the KDD Cup 2013-Author Paper Identification Challenge
Ranked among the top 2% of all Kagglers.

This is the list of courses that I completed:

No	Course name	Completed
1	Probabilistic Graphical Models: Advanced track with distinction	June 2012
2	Computing for Data Analysis	Dec 2012
3	Machine Learning	Dec 2012
4	Neural Networks for machine learning	Dec 2012
5	Data Analysis	Mar 2013
6	Natural Language Processing with distinction	May 2013

Thoughts on getting here? In no particular order:

Learning is incredibly fun. And self-motivated learning is much more fun than college. Motivation in college education is usually built around too much stick and too little carrot.
Although online learning might seem very disconnected, the online student community is tight-knit and extremely helpful. I would not have completed certain assignments in PGM and NLP if not for other students who posted helpful tips.
Support from family and friends matter a lot.
Finishing a course is just one part of the story. Applying the learning in a real-world context is a very different challenge.

Blogs/books that I found helpful: