Jon, you and my DD tend to regard such things in a similar light, quite honestly.

A single bad experience on a geometry midterm, coupled with an extracurricular "fail" the same week was what sent our DD on the road to hell the first time.

Frankly, those two failures were the result of poor preparation and lack of understanding. I didn't argue about either one of them, and both were fairly objective evaluations, IMO-- even in retrospect and knowing how that wound up.

I'm really not happy if that kind of spiral gets going as a result of fairly idiosyncratic or subjective input, however-- unless it is clear that it IS idiosyncratic/subjective. (Artistic merit, for example.)

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.