Indifferently Barbered

The title of today's post comes from a description of the title character in the H. G. Wells story Love and Mr. Lewisham (project Guttenberg): 

He was a passable-looking youngster of eighteen, fair-haired, indifferently barbered, and with a quite unnecessary pair of glasses on his fairly prominent nose—he wore these to make himself look older, that discipline might be maintained.

I've been reading the complete works of H. G. Wells off and on over the past couple weeks, and when I read that sentence, the phrase "indifferently barbered" jumped out at me as a great description. In my mind, it implies some amount of effort, but not necessarily care or careful thought.

That got me thinking about all sorts of other situations (testing, research, organizational) in which such a phrase might be an apt description of reality in some instances:

• Hi class! Next week is the final, indifferently composed of items from previous years' exams.
• In addition to our main vocabulary measure, participants also completed a background questionnaire, indifferently borrowed from similar studies.
• We are pleased to announce our organization's new mission statement, indifferently composed of trending buzzwords.   
• All essays will be scored by raters using a common rubric, indifferently applied.