Dr. Pachankis and Dr. Hatzenbuehler would not be surprised to learn that more than half the men in my randomly assigned “small group” seminar at Yale were gay. Deriving self-worth from achievement-related domains, like Ivy League admissions, is a common strategy among closeted men seeking to maintain self-esteem while hiding their stigma. The strategy is an effort to compensate for romantic isolation and countless suppressed enthusiasms. And it requires time-consuming study and practice, which conveniently provide an excuse for not dating.

Best of all, it distracts: “What Barbie? Look at my report card!”

The phenomenon itself is not necessarily good or bad. It just is. Parents cannot turn their kids gay to improve their grades, just as gay kids would be foolish to remain closeted in hopes that it will get them into Harvard.

But the study does show that the longer a young man conceals his sexual orientation, the more heavily he invests in external measures of success, potentially leading to undue stress and social isolation. Perhaps that explains why I recently moved to Washington, D.C., America’s most populous closet, where esteemed work abounds, promotions are frequent and ambition is in the water supply.

Another of the study’s findings is that boys who grow up in more stigmatizing environments are more likely to seek self-worth through competition. I spent my first 18 years in a rural, religious town in North Carolina, a state that recently passed a constitutional amendment barring same-sex unions by a wide margin. Now here I am, a metal detector scanning for golden prizes. That’s no coincidence, the research suggests.

Like “Girls” to a 20-something Brooklynite, this paper reached out, stared me in the eyes and announced, “I’ve got your number.” I had assumed that my secret was safe, that I had made myself illegible. But every merit badge turns out to have been a clue. The study helped me see that by now someone had surely figured out the truth. The jig was up. And to my surprise, I felt relieved.

But seeing your reflection in an empirical study has its drawbacks. The flip side of discovering you’re not alone is the melting of your presumed snowflake uniqueness. Now I’m a statistic, another data point, just an ordinary overachieving closet case.