I am a second year returning college student. I am taking JAVA this semester, I am learning a lot, it is a very rigorous class.
I am working on a game with my buddy or the Net, on a small game, a 'mini-RPG'. It is very small, and is meant to be played in a sitting, mostly just for us to do it and complete it. I was looking at something like RealityFactory, which can be used to make some game, without any coding, by attaching scripts to entities in the editor. I loaded MonkeyWorld3D, and it looked to be about the same as any level editor…
We are both beginning Java programmers, but the game is pretty simple by design, we are wanting to use freely available content, it is not meant to be complex. Hopefully, we can have a good playable version in a month, at least something where you can walk around…
Is jME right for us, or should we stick with a game kit like RF for now ?
I'm a 2nd year student in software engineering, and learning jme was fairly quick. If you follow the tutorials, you should be able to have a map with someone running around in it in a couple of days. (unless you want to have it networked, in that case you would probably need to use JGN, and i don't know how much time it takes to learn the basics of that yet ^^)
Bu then again, I never used RF and i don't know what kind of game you want to do, so I really can't tell
jme is a easy to learn but hard to master tool kit. theres tons of features avaliable for really sophisticated game, but u can also create a simple system in no time.
To second what others have said, the basics of jME are pretty simple to learn if you check out the tests and read the tutorials on the wiki.
If you’re only just learning Java then it might take a little longer or be a little confusing at times as sometimes Java “best practices” aren’t used for the sake of speed and what not.
Also this is the nicest most helpful community I’ve ever been a part of, so getting help if you do run into trouble is a breeze! 
So my advice would be to give it a go for a couple of weeks and decide if it’s right for you after.
If you "only" want to make a small Game, than in Internet exists perhabs other stuff.
But when you realy want to learn Java and Object oriented programming, then creating a cool Game with JME is one of the best ways you can take.
In study I learned not half so lot, like I learned in programming with JME.
I began my project by trying to use JOGL and create my own engine/physics, and although I completely abandoned the effort when I found jME. The time I spent with JOGL ,and GLUT before, was invaluable to me now; and it has facilitated my jME learning curve. So my advice to you would be this: if this is just a one-time graphics oreiented project than by all means use jME. If this is just the start to developing other CG type software then you may want to take a look at JOGL (for Java) or GLUT (for C) at some point in the near fututre.
Good luck, and welcome 