Never, ever, ever give up #hashtag

from Lifehack.org

For the first time, I gave students an exam on a unit that I planned and implemented. While the results are still too be tabulated, I was a bit disappointed by one aspect. Even though the students had two days to work on the exam, there were students who quit on the first day. Students could think about problems and study on the night between the two days of exams. It got thinking about the nature of mathematics. With the CCSS, we have eight practices that were are supposed to develop in students. . . 
MP1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
MP2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
MP3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
MP4. Model with mathematics.
MP5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
MP6. Attend to precision.
MP7 Look for and make use of structure.

MP8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

How do you scaffold grit and perseverance?

One more closing thought of pessimism related to the attached image. The first panel left me with an interesting thought. Sixty years of three-month-long attempts could almost mean 239 failures before success. I am not sure if that would be exhilarating or exhausting.