What To Do With USRAs?

Instead of REUs, in Canada we have USRAs (undergraduate student research awards). The competitiveness of these USRAs vary widely from institution to institution - basically, NSERC (our funding agency) gives practically every research university in the country some money to spend for this purpose, and the university decides who receives the awards based on a proposal and the student transcript.

What's interesting is that there's also an industrial USRA. These work pretty much the same as the academic ones, except the employer is a company rather than a professor, and applications are submitted directly to NSERC rather than to any particular university.

USRAs are excellent excuses to get into a research lab. Indeed, many professors at my school (and, from what I have heard, other schools as well) will not take on undergraduate students unless we obtain USRAs ("hey, we undergrads come partially funded!"); many industrial research labs also require student applicants to be eligible for USRAs. There's just one catch.

One can hold at most three USRAs throughout an undergraduate career.

This work term (which, by the way, has just ended today*) has used up one USRA. Assuming that I will succeed in obtaining two more USRAs, where should I use them?

Here's the thing. One of the senior supervisors at the company (which I no longer work...) has, ah, hinted in most obvious terms that he'd like me back for another four months. Now, given the current economy, this is a very generous "hint" indeed. However, from a personal viewpoint, the answer to this offer is "maybe". There are many aspects of the lab that I'd love to learn more about, but these aspects are more "engineering" rather than "chemistry". Also, the company culture and I do not fit very well; casualness aside, many people, well, many people just don't care, to the point that deadlines are ignored until they become urgent. This is true in many industrial positions, but this lab (a research lab, to boot!) has possibly the most pronounced expression of apathy that I've ever seen. Senior management, of course, is blissfully ignorant of all that. But I digress. Anyway, if I do go back (assuming the company still wants me around by then), that'll use up a second USRA.

Even if I work for another an industrial research lab, it is somewhat likely that I will need to apply for the second USRA. A process lab will probably not require a USRA, but, eh, doing the same reactions day after day, for no particularly interesting reason, pales after awhile. The one major advantage of working in industry (aside from the money) is that one works with alot of different people. Industrial experience trains the social skills aspects of a student; this is pretty important.

However, I am quite interested in working at an academic lab. Starting to think about graduate school, here, and from what I've heard, no academic really cares about industrial experience. Besides, I need to know whether I actually *like* research, and yea, I still haven't figured that out yet.

Volunteering for a theoretical chemistry lab thus far has been an extraordinarily strange experience, not in the least because I disappear from the professor's radar for months at a stretch, due to work. The work itself is also rather strange, from trivia (make graphs in Excel!) to something that, well, "the professor will know it when he sees it" but I sure don't. (Learning a new mathematical system sounds easy until you have to do it with minimal resources. Add physics.)

I'd also like to explore different fields, not just theoretical chemistry. Thus, working in academia will probably require both USRAs (unless I end up detesting research so much that I swear off of it complete, but that's not likely). I will almost definitely use one USRA in research just so I can stay on campus for one very special term (there's this analytical chemistry course offered every other year that I have coveted for awhile now; thank the Registrar that X-ray Crystallography is offered next Fall when I will be on-campus).

So, here be options:
1. Take a second work term with the same company. The pay's good, the work's steady, what more do you want?** (And the taking things apart and fixing them part is fun, too.) Then use the one last USRA at university.
2. Just stick to working in industry for work terms (holding a USRA requires full-time research, i.e. a work term), for much the same reasons as Option 1 (though possibly without the perk of "taking stuff apart").
3. Use the two remaining USRAs with the same professor during work terms, whoever s/he is. To be mercenary about it, "you need references, don't you?"
4. Use the two remaining USRAs with two different professors, again during work terms, to explore different fields.
5. Work for tuition during work term, volunteer in an academic lab during the school term. This has the disadvantage of being dicier (since this means I don't come funded at all), and will most likely drive me absolutely insane from workload even if a professor is willing to chance it. Besides, I *will* fall off the professor's radar once work term comes around.

In the vein of "exploring fields", I should mention that I'd love to go to seminars, except that I don't know when/where they are! The department likes to hide the schedule from undergrads, or something - in theory, it's all online, but in reality...it's not. (I'll be politely nagging the department secretary come next term.)

*Not that I'll ever admit it to my coworkers, but: I'll miss them, the rascals.
**That, is a quote (slightly paraphrased). From: A Philosophical Strangler, by Eric Flint.