Daily Activities
As an undergraduate researcher, your weekly/daily work will vary depending on your research field, experience, and supervisor. The majority of undergraduate researchers assist in carrying out experiments, conducting literature reviews, and/or developing supporting code for their graduate supervisors. You will most likely not have your very own, separate research project, but you will have the opportunity to involve yourself in the graduate student’s work by communicating your ideas, thoughts, and concerns about the projects. This way, you will gain research experience in an academic lab setting while learning about lab safety, etiquette, and conduct.
Time Commitment and Responsibility
Most graduate students are flexible and understanding in their time commitment requests. They understand that you are an undergraduate student and you have many other commitments like classes and clubs. They also understand that some weeks, like midterms and finals weeks, are more demanding and require you to take time away from your lab responsibilities.
This does not mean, however, that you can come into the lab whenever you feel like it. Most mentors will ask that you set aside time each week in your schedule to come into the lab to work on experiments. This, of course, varies based on the nature of the work you are doing. For hands-on research like chemistry or physics experiments, you should set aside a 4-hour block(s) to be able to run experiments. Computational research is usually more flexible, as you can code whenever and for as long or as little as you can.
In the URSA program, we generally say that 10 hours is the maximum amount of time that any sane supervisor will ask you to do. However, the average weekly commitment is usually 6-8 hours depending on what needs to be done that week.