The Course I Failed That Made Me Better at What I Do
I didn’t expect one of the most important lessons of my work to come from a course I failed.
In my first year of university, I took the course as a requirement for journalism students. I thought I’d love it. Pattern, clarity, thought architecture? My jam.
But this wasn’t that kind of logic. It was symbolic logic, math dressed in philosophy’s clothing. Letters, formulas, truth tables, and theorems.
I remember sitting in that lecture hall, my nervous system bracing, thinking, “Why would anyone take this course willingly?”
I failed. It wasn’t my first failure with math.
A voice that followed me
In Grade 9, my math teacher told me not to bother with university-track courses.
“Not smart enough,” he said.
Thankfully, my parents didn’t buy it. I found a teacher to prepare me, and I enrolled anyway. But that voice followed me, quiet, persistent, whispering every time I froze, everytime I questioned whether I belonged.
It took years to unlearn the lie.
I wasn’t stupid.
I was wired differently.
I learn in layers, through story, sensation, context, not equations. I needed a different kind of logic
Take Two
When I retook the course, everything changed. Same code. New professor. Entirely different lens.
This time, we studied logical fallacies, those invisible sleights of mind we use to protect ego over truth. And suddenly, I could see them.
In clients.
In teams.
In myself.
Invisible Fallacies We Call Truth
Logical fallacies aren’t just mental tricks for propaganda and negotiation. They’re accidental protection strategies. See if any of the following sound familiar, not to diagnose, but to gently decode.
‘I need to make sense of this before I act.’
—False Safety in Logic.
‘If I take up space, I’m abandoning someone else.’
—Empathic Collapse Fallacy.
‘I can’t charge for this, it comes naturally.’
—Value = Effort Fallacy.
‘I know this doesn’t feel right, but I should...’
—Override Bias.
‘If I smile or seem calm, people will assume I’m not doing enough.’
—Visibility vs. Value Fallacy.
‘I should just be grateful.’
—Gratitude Gaslighting.
What I learned
What I thought was a failure in logic was a fluency in self-protection.
We don’t avoid the truth because we’re weak. We do it because our systems are wired for safety.
And safety often means simplifying, shrinking, rationalizing, and contorting. We flatten complexity to feel safe. We build scaffolding out of old stories and call it reason.
But when you begin to reverse-engineer those defences, you start to see the faulty logic for what it is: a veil. Not a verdict.
What I Do Now
I use what I learned in that course almost every day. I see how people rationalize what no longer fits. Justify choices with outdated scripts. Turn fear into something that sounds like clarity.
I do it too. But now, I catch it.
The red herrings.
The false equivalencies.
The ‘I’m just not that kind of person’ shrug.
The gaslighting turned inward, ’Maybe I’m overreacting.’
The humility-flavoured self-erasure, ’It’s not that big of a deal.’
When we’re dysregulated, we reach for mental scaffolding to feel safe, even if it’s built from untruth.
What I Know Now
Once you name the fallacy, the defence softens.
Once you see the pattern, the truth has room to breathe.
And once you name the truth beneath it, something deeper unlocks.
‘I’ve always done it this way,’ becomes ‘I’m scared to change what once kept me safe.’
‘I’m not that kind of person’ becomes ‘That identity no longer serves me.’
What looked like sabotage becomes a doorway. What felt like failure becomes freedom.
That’s what I do now - pattern recognition, clarity excavation.
Making the invisible visible
It turns out that I needed Logic 101, after all.
Want to start spotting your fallacies in real time? Try this:
Pause when your reasoning sounds rehearsed. ASK: Is this clarity, or self-protection?
Notice where you say ‘should’, that’s often Override Bias.
Track your internal dialogue. Are you gaslighting yourself in the name of ‘being reasonable’?
Watch for either/or and all/nothing framing. Complexity rarely lives in binaries.
Practice naming the truth beneath the defence. That’s where real choice and freedom lives.
