Recently on social media, a group of my former students were reminiscing about my obsession with staple perfection. Several suggested that they received trauma due to this practice (I hope they were joking). Others remarked that they never needed that level of perfection in college as I had led them to believe. As I read (and made a joking comment of my own), I hoped that they realized that the true lesson that I was trying to impart had very little to do with how they stapled their papers.
The true purpose was to get them to think about how they presented themselves to the outside world and to work at achieving more than merely "good enough." We are judged, whether fairly or not, on every aspect of our appearance. People's reactions to us are influenced before we ever have a chance to express ourselves. People do judge books by their covers.
While I don't believe that we should overly care about what other people think about ourselves, I also know that we must make an effort to present ourselves (or our ideas) in the best possible way if we want people to take us (or our ideas) seriously. By getting my students to think about the importance of something as insignificant as a staple, I hoped that I showed them that the tiny details are sometimes as important as the large ones, that by showing care and consideration for the little things, they could be entrusted with the care of greater things.
And hopefully, they would learn to appreciate the little things that people did for them in their lives as well.