I agree with the quote, “learning by doing”, that’s the best of learning.
My experience through these 13+ years of career showed me that knowledge is more important than a certificate or a degree, studying is great, and having a degree not only gives you the know-how, it opens your mind and helps you how to tackle problems, I’m a Systems Engineer that always loved design and visuals, so after I got my degree I decided to pursue that path, on my terms, learning every single day, watching tutorials and learning how to use all sort of tools and apps, I had the fortune of co-founding a creative studio, we had to deal directly with clients, and gave me the opportunity of growing and found a new challenge with every project we started, some of them self imposed because of course we wanted to do better.
I’m curious by nature, so whenever I don’t know something, I research, and try to replicate it, that’s the secret sauce.
I learned by watching tutorials, training my eye and my mind, and challenging myself whenever I see something cool, I research how to make it happen so for me youtube is a great learning tool.
Certificates, sure they’re fancy to have on your resume, but in reality, knowledge and experience are way better, and most of that can’t be added to a certificate.
So, if you really want to have certificates on your resume, you can use an e-learning platform, they are a bunch nowadays, some of them are not too pricey and you can get certificates from pretty good places like Harvard university or Columbia university.
This is a list of my favorite platforms:
Udemy has pretty nice content too you can buy individual courses, but I recommend reading the reviews before purchasing.