My mind was made up. It was time to see what all those YouTube ads were raving about. It was time to try Skillshare. 

I typed in the URL and mentally prepared myself for the learning experience to commence. 

Is paying $8.30 a month worth it? Would I really use it? I put in my credit card information, closed my eyes and pressed submit. At least the most painful part was over.

For those unfamiliar with the bombardment of ads Skillshare has commissioned, it is an online learning platform. Teachers post seminars on their areas of expertise, and most of them are compilations of short videos that the learner follows along with. It piqued my interest, so I began learning.

French

This experiment gave me the perfect opportunity to achieve a dream I’ve had my entire life but have been too lazy to pursue: learning French. I typed ‘beginner French’ and started sifting through their large volume of French courses. 

The 323 results that popped up overwhelmed me just a bit. Even though it’s good to have choices, this many options was a bit much. 

After sifting through the results, I chose one and started learning. It was presented as a compilation of three-minute videos, with each one teaching one or two words. The teaching style was easy to grasp, and I have been able to stick with it. However, I do feel very goofy repeating the words out loud to myself. 

All in all, I enjoyed this class. Once I found it, the material was interesting, and the teacher was thorough. 

Interior design

I have been meaning to redecorate my room, so I figured a crash course in interior design would be useful. To my dismay, there were no classes on redecorating a room, only starting from scratch. Obviously, I can’t replace my furniture, so this was a slight issue.

I settled on a course about bedroom design, and it was fairly helpful. I was able to pick up some tips about color schemes and utilizing Pinterest for visualization, but I did have to wade through a lot of material that was not applicable to me.

Thinking that this was the perfect opportunity for comparison, I turned to YouTube. I was able to find videos that gave me advice more specific to my situation, like how to switch out easily replaceable things (such as comforters, posters, pillows, etc.) to change the aesthetic of the room without buying new furniture. 

In this case, using YouTube was a much better resource. Not so much for the French lessons, because the YouTube videos for those did not nearly have as much content to learn.

Procreate

Recently, I have been getting into digital drawing on an app called Procreate. It has an overwhelming number of features, so while I have been using it, I am nowhere near understanding all of its capabilities. 

I think this was my favorite class by far. Perhaps I’m biased because I enjoy making art, but I feel like I learned a lot and had fun—as cliche as it sounds. 

Each 5-10 minute video talked about a different feature in the app, and I tried each of them out as it went along. Again, not every single video was applicable to me, but they are easy to skip, so it was not a big problem. 

While the course was not able to teach me how to draw, it did teach me how to use all the different features of the app so that I could disguise myself as a real artist. 

So: Is Skillshare really worth it?  My conclusion is that if your goal is learning long-term skills, like cooking or speaking a new language, skillshare is 100%worth it. However, if you are looking for one-time tips, like how to redecorate or how to make donuts, Youtube will yield better (and free) results.