So… I wasn’t planning to do this.

But here we are.

For the past few years, I’ve been sharing videos from a class I teach at Duke University called Learning to Fail.

It’s a strange little course. Messy. Unexpected. Occasionally includes students tossing jellybeans at each other. Once we even built a replica of Duke Chapel entirely out of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Another time, I had students trying to convince strangers on campus to play Jenga with them in exchange for bonus points. And that was just the first day!

Despite how ridiculous the class sounds, something about it works. I’ve been teaching it for a decade, and I’ve had dozens of students randomly email — years after graduating — just to tell me it was the most important class they’d taken.Not because it taught them how to fail — because it helped them finally stop fearing it.

I never meant to turn Learning to Fail into anything beyond the classroom. However, when I started posting little moments from the course online, the messages started rolling in.

“Wait—is this a real class?”
“Can I take this if I’m not a student?”
“Please. I need this. How do I sign up?”

At first, I brushed off the questions. Not because I didn’t care. But because I genuinely didn’t think I could translate it. I convinced myself the class only works because of the weird, magical chemistry that happens when people are in a room together doing awkward things and learning from them in real time. How was that supposed to happen over Zoom?

So I did nothing. For years.

But after hundreds of comments, dozens of emails, and even a few random strangers who showed up outside my classroom, I started wondering if I was doing the very thing I’m always warning my students about: making excuses to avoid something I knew was important because I was worried about possibly failing and looking stupid.

So I’ve decided to try.

I’ve spent the past few months trying to boil down the in-person class to its core essence — not just the games, not the laughs, not the clever one-liners — but the thing that makes people leave with a different relationship to fear. That feeling.

And after lots of failed attempts to find the right strategy, I think I’ve finally figured it out.

So here’s what I’m offering.

This summer, I’m running a live online version of Learning to Fail for the very first time.

It’s not pre-recorded. It’s not shiny. It’s not a polished online course with slick animations and downloadable PDFs.

It’s a class.

There will be TAs. There will be a syllabus. There will be assignments. And yes, you will fail. That’s not a threat. That’s actually the core promise.

We’ll meet six times — two live sessions per month from June to August. In the first session each month, I’ll introduce a challenge. It’ll be something you have to do in real life, in your world, wherever you are. Something that makes you a little uncomfortable. Something you’ll probably mess up. And then, once you’ve done it, you’ll create a video failure log. That’s what my students do. You’ll turn it in. We’ll watch them.

In the second session of each month, we’ll come back together and discuss what happened. Not just what you did, but what you felt. What you learned. What you’re starting to understand now that you never quite saw before.

Also: there will be guest speakers. People who have failed — sometimes publicly, sometimes spectacularly — and have stories worth sharing.

This is a beta run, so I’m limiting it to 50 students. Not because I’m trying to be fancy. I just feel like I maybe need to keep it small enough to feel like a class. To know who’s there. To make space for actual conversation.

I promise, it won’t be perfect. But it will be real. And it might be exactly what you need.

Who is this for?

You don’t need to be a student. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur. You don’t need to be someone who has “failure” written on the whiteboard in your coworking space like it’s a brand strategy. You just need to be someone who’s tired of standing still.

If you’re honest, you probably already know whether this class is for you. You’ve got stuff you want to do — or maybe even need to do — but it just keeps… not happening. And it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s not because you don’t care. It’s because every time you get close to taking a risk, you feel that tug. That little voice reminding you what could go wrong. How embarrassing it might be. What people might think. So you hesitate. You rework. You delay. You stay small. Safer. And life gets… tighter.

This class is for the people who are done with that. Who are tired of tiptoeing around the things they care about. Tired of telling themselves that next month will be different. That when things calm down, they’ll finally start. That once they feel a little more ready, then they’ll go for it. Only to realize they’ve been saying that for years.

It’s for perfectionists who would rather do nothing than do something imperfectly. For overthinkers who spiral so long on the first step that they forget what the goal even was. For talented people who’ve been quietly waiting for permission to stop hiding. For students who’ve never really failed before and have no idea what to do when something doesn’t go according to plan. For adults who failed once — hard — and decided that was enough risk for a lifetime.

It’s for creatives stuck in idea mode. For entrepreneurs with draft folders full of launches that never launched. For writers with 17 “chapter ones.” For people who don’t know what they want to do yet, but know it isn’t this — this stuckness, this second-guessing, this low-level anxiety that seems to hover just behind every good intention.

It’s for anyone who’s felt like the only thing standing between them and the next version of themselves is… trying. Really trying. Publicly. Imperfectly. With a chance of messing it up.

And if that feels familiar — if any part of this sounds like the voice in your head that shows up right before you chicken out — then yeah. This class is for you.

Here’s what you need to know.

We’ll meet for roughly an hour a couple Wednesdays for three months at 8PM ET.
June 11. June 25. July 2. July 16. August 6. August 20.

That’s six live classes. Real-time. With real people.

If you can’t make it live, you’ll get the replay. But I hope you try to come because the real magic of this class doesn’t live in the challenge prompts or the clever quotes or even the failure logs. It lives in the conversations that happen when people realize they’re not alone. When they say something out loud they’ve never said before. When they surprise themselves. That stuff’s harder to catch on a recording.

There won’t be a certificate. Or a grade. Or a digital badge for your LinkedIn. This isn’t any sort of “official course” — whatever that means. But you might walk away with something better: a clearer understanding of how you get in your own way — and what it looks like to stop.

You don’t need to be an expert in anything. You don’t need to have your life together. You don’t need to come with a plan.

You just need to show up. That’s the first hard thing. And once you do that, we’ll take it from there.

If you’re still reading…

It’s probably because something about this feels familiar. Not in a flashy, “this course will change your life!” kind of way. But in the I didn’t even realize I needed this until just now kind of way.

And if that’s the case — if something here made your stomach flip, or your pulse quicken, or your brain whisper, “Okay fine… maybe I should” — then you’re probably exactly the kind of person this class was made for.

Or maybe you’re the opposite. Maybe a “B.S. alarm” is blaring inside your head causing you to think “this guy can’t be for real.” Maybe you’ve seen my social media posts and think I’m even more of a fraud than every Instagram influencer with 5,000 followers and “Life Coach” in their bio. You’re probably exactly the kind of person this class was made for, too. Not because I know more than you, but because I’ve spent most of my life trying to outrun the voice inside my head telling me the exact same thing — and building this class is just me finally turning around and facing it.

In other words, I honestly don’t know what you’ll get out of joining me on this journey. I can’t promise any breakthroughs. But I can promise we’ll all have an opportunity to try something we aren’t sure we can do. That we’ll mess up, reflect on it, and grow in ways we don’t expect. And if nothing else, all of us will come away from the experience knowing a little more about what it feels like to stop waiting and just start.

At the very least, that’s what I’m doing by creating this course… just starting and seeing what happens. I hope some of you will join me. The truth is… I’m not totally sure how many will or even how big to make this.

My instinct is that it’ll work best with 50 people. That feels like the right size for real conversations. Small enough that we can actually get to know each other, hear each other, notice when someone says something they didn’t think they’d say out loud. So that’s where I’m setting the limit.

And we’ll see where it goes from there. Maybe it grows into something bigger. Or maybe it stays small and weird and honest. Or maybe five people sign up because everyone else thinks it’s the most ridiculous idea in the world, and I learn a valuable lesson about failure as a result of trying to run a failure class. That sounds wonderfully ironic, I suppose.

Regardless of how many of you join, the one thing I know for sure is I’m going to teach it like I always do — live, fully present, and with the sincere hope that the people who show up are the ones who were supposed to be there.

And if you’re still here, still reading, still hovering your mouse over the button trying to decide if it’s too risky or too ridiculous or too soon or too late — maybe that means you’re one of those people.

I’d love to find out.
Let’s learn to fail. Together.
–Dr. Dinin