I can relate to your experiences in spirit if not in exact details. My father wouldn't have noticed a B or cared if he had noticed. I didn't score less than 100 on a spelling test until 9th grade. There were standardized tests given to all students in my 8th year of school to sort us into classes for high school and college prep. I got three 98 percentiles, one 96, and one 75. Who were those 99ers? I was disappointed. I also dropped out of high school but I left two months into my first year. The obsession with perfection carried over into music. It took me a long time to learn to accept I could not achieve perfection. In anything. There were people much smarter and much more talented. They also worked harder. With me it had nothing to do with parental expectations or outside pressure. Pure ego I suppose
I really should have read the article first to see if I'm even on topic