There really is nothing to do in my independent study until we get more data, but I decided "show face" in the lab today anyway. I am really concerned that I'm not doing enough work, but (a) I don't know how to bring it up with my professor and (b) I'm not sure there is any more work for me to do even if I did bring it up. I don't particularly care about my grade because my GPA from here on in is moot anyway (my senior grades won't be on my transcript when grad schools evaluate them) but I need my professor to give me a good recommendation. Thus, the showing face. As long as I maintain the illusion that I'm trying to be industrious, his good impression of me carried over from last semester should hold out. I hope.

Oh, and Gabriel, ex-roommate, asked me to write him a recommendation for some mission trip, which made me think about how my professors will be sitting in their office thinking of good things to say about me in the near future, which made me nervous. As I actually wrote the thing, I had to keep checking myself because every single positive thing I wrote down sounded phony and disingenuous - things you say only because you're filling in a recommendation. Dammit. I'm all in knots. Time to do something else.