That first night after work, I showered and popped one of my mom’s Lean Cuisines into the microwave. I was ready to surf the web. It was going to be a long and lonely summer without my best friends, Jack and Kevin, who were away on a highly selective teen tour of Southeast Asia. In the absence of friends, parents, or a car—sore subject—our family PC was my only portal to the outside world.

One link led to another, and eventually I found myself on Professor Mallard’s Wikipedia page. She sounded legit, and her lecture on YouTube had about a zillion views:

CECILY MALLARD: It’s not students with the highest IQ who consistently succeed. It’s not the best-looking ones or the ones from wealthy families. It’s the grittiest. The ones who keep trying, even when they fail. The single most reliable predictor of success is grit.

When my dad talked about grit, I hated it. I was convinced he was using it to put me down. But Professor Mallard wasn’t putting me down; she was telling me there was still hope. That I could still be successful—with grit.

By the end of the week, I had grown obsessed. Grit became my magic potion: the cure to my constantly sidetracked train of thought. It was the gigantic anvil that would squash my insecurities and pave the way for the rest of my life. I watched all of Professor Mallard’s lecture videos, read all of her interviews, and absorbed as much as I could from her psychological studies. I even checked out a copy of her book from the Union Library.

Sunday night, I took her online evaluation, the Grit Quiz, which asked me to value how much I identified with a series of statements:

#1: New ideas and projects distract me from previous ones.

If grit was distracting me from my internship, didn’t that mean . . . Never mind. Too meta. I was stuck between “Very much like me” and “Mostly like me,” which sounded like the same answer. These options were sketchily subjective. [Mostly like me.]

#2: Setbacks don’t discourage me.

The double negative threw me off, so I simplified the statement: Setbacks encourage me. That sounded even weirder. I picked the neutral option. [Somewhat like me.]

#3: I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest.

Wasn’t this just the first question worded differently? For variety’s sake, I stepped up my answer. [Very much like me.]

The assessment went on like this for a few more questions.

Calculating your grit . . .

Your grit score is: 2.63. You are grittier than 10% of the US population.

I flunked. At first I wasn’t surprised. The Grit Quiz was just confirming what I already knew about myself. But then it hit me—the heavy hand of failure—and boy, did it sting. Suddenly I was back in that godforsaken boxing ring. When are you going to get serious? Jab. You’re all over the place! Punch. Stop playing games. You’re almost an adult. What in the world do you care about? Knockout.