When I started my masters degree, I had to do that thing where you sit in a circle and tell everyone your name, undergrad and why you’re doing a postgrad.

I went first and told them I was studying postgrad because I couldn’t find a job as a graduate, figuring that in this economy, everyone would be firmly in the same boat, I’d be hailed as a relatable and cool guy and someone would ask me to take over Turnbull’s position as Prime Minister. Beyoncé and Idris Elba would later be my best friends.

Turns out, everyone except for me was taking this extremely expensive degree in the name of “upskilling”, which is corporate speak for “being able to earn more money”. I figured that $50,000 on HECS is a bit hectic for that, so I did some research, crunched some numbers and got you this handy guide on how to do that for about $50,000 less than that. I got you.

#1 YouTube

Every single person I know who works with software in their job goes HAM on the YouTube tutorials. I learned how to use Protools on YouTube. I also learned how to deliver a baby on YouTube, it’s THAT good.

If you search your software and “beginner” you can muck around and learn a program within weeks (weeks of late night super intense software study and tears). YouTube is particularly good for trouble shooting specific things. We all owe our lives and the difference of our new salaries to these tech nerds uploading these videos.

#2 General Assembly

General Assembly is kind of like the Lentil as Anything of upskilling. They offer free classes on things like coding (pretty solid upskill), social media marketing (higher tier upskill, I reckon) and data analytics (I feel like this is grand high bitch level upskilling, but I literally don’t even understand what data analytics is).

You pretty much just turn up, soak it up and leave with your skills upped. It’s fucking sick.

#3 Lynda

I could put money on the table that one of your lecturers or tutors has recommended this site to you at some stage in your university experience.

It’s a video platform that offers in-depth tutorials on a range of softwares, with user friendly scrubbing systems and transcripts. Your skills could join the mile-high club. Because they’re so up.

#4 Meetups

So, there’s this website called Meetups, which sounds like a site for anonymous orgies, but is in fact a site for social, industry and upskilling groups to form and subsequently meet. Every city has pages upon pages of groups on Meetups, and some of those groups are solely people trying to learn new softwares and technologies. Blockchain seems to be very popular around these parts, which isn’t technically something you could really upskill with, but will make your next tinder date dislike you pretty quickly.

#5 Just Having A Fucking Crack

Putting aside your weeknights for a month to fuck around on a new program will for surrrrre make you at least competent enough to start using YouTube and Lynda tutorials, which in turn will make you into a 23rd-floor skilled person. Who even needs a masters degree?