I'm a sophomore undergrad and had approached a professor from my department towards the end of my freshman year to work under a project under him in the summer. However, the projects he supervised required learning (I didn't have the necessary background for research projects) and hence rather than just a summer project it was going to be a longer project. Due to COVID, I did some tasks and communicated twice within 2 weeks but ended up replying to him after 3 months during the next time because (external factors, I said in a mail to him) I was just very confused about the work. He still replied and confirmed if I was interested in the work but around the same time my college resumed virtually and I got slumped with a lot of work. I'm still confused about the task and I didn't get to work on it at all. It's been again 2 months and my university's schedule keeps me so busy that I feel it'll be bad if I reply with no work. I get a lot of smaller slots to work rather than a larger slot. The latter helps me focus if I'm learning something new or thinking originally, the former do not. I really feel like it's a disrespect to him even though I didn't mean to. I really want to do the work. Is there anything I can do to salvage this situation?
Usually, at my university, newly sophomore students do not get to work on research projects under professors due to lack of necessary background. I had the opportunity to learn too, I feel like I wasted an opportunity on hand.
