Actually, not having to choose your project makes it much easier in many cases. If you get the choice, you don't just go to the lab and find a few bottles, mix them and make nice looking crystals and then go home.
You will have to write down why you chose whatever you chose, and there's a lot of work in planning it all, and the school may not have the chemicals/whatever you need in your project. Usually projects like that take multiple weeks and are very stressful. (This is for projects where you have "choice" in general, not just chemistry).
The projects can be fun, in programming I made a Map War 2 prototype, that was very fun, but in general I think the projects where we have choice are harder than the ones where we don't.