Indeedy!
"There was something to be said for social pressure to care what others think, and to put one‘s best foot forward in public," reminds me of the pains my father took to teach me as much proper personal grooming as he could. It was very important that I looked presentable, and paramount on Sundays when going to church. As I grew up, of course, I started doing my own thing, much to his chagrin. For many years I wore jeans and casual shirts to church. It took a pipe to set me straight. Ironic, since he hates smoking. An online article about pipe smoking (Pipe Smoking 101) had a link at the bottom to another one: Dressing like a Man for Mass; needless to say, I've been wearing a suit to church ever since (and carrying a nice looking briar to enjoy after Mass—Sundays are cob-less days!)
During my teens and rebelious days, I had another eye-opening situation: a teacher lectured me because my clinical analysis lab log looked like crap. "This tells me A LOT about what kind of person you are," he said and those are the words that I recall essentially verbatim from the whole conversation. He was darn right.
Hence, I tried to inculcate similar values to my students during my own two stints as a lab instructor. I remarked that specially nowadays, in the age of fake peaceful coexistence, the era of 'ooo, nobody has the right to tell me what to doooo...', looking good has not lost its importance. All the contrary, in a time when people are afraid to say what they think lest they be called sexist, racist, [whatever]-ist, or be taken to court, looking good is even MORE important, because we no longer have the societal feedback; but just because people aren't saying to someone 'you suck', doesn't mean the don't think it—and we tend to act based on what we think or believe to be true, not on what we vocally express.
I didn't, at least consciously, deduct marks from assignments that were turned in looking like crap, but I did make it a point to give extra marks to those that were typed, well organised, and cleanly looking.
