This paper examines supervisors at a reform university where most supervision concerns undergraduate and Master's project work. Drawing on Grant's ([2018]. 'Assembling Ourselves Differently? Contesting the Dominant Imaginary of Doctoral Supervision'. Parallax 24 (3): 356-370) understanding of being a supervisor as an ongoing process of assembling oneself, it focuses on the role of this institutional framework as an 'outside' element in this assembling process. I argue that it shapes the conditions of that assembling through the changing conceptions and temporalities of supervision . While supervisors continue to aspire to the original conception of supervision as a distinct pedagogical mode that is -- even for undergraduates -- akin to apprenticeship, palpable quickening and demands for instruction-like supervision endanger this conception. This temporal compression, together with the prevalence of short-term cyclicality of projects and co-negotiation of multiple longer-term temporal frames of becoming a supervisor, makes for a temporally multi-layered and particularly intense supervisory practice.