While many schools allow for a stress-free, laid back summer. Some have the intent to make students omniscient among their studies and partake in a summer project to keep the gears moving in their brains. I believe students should have the freedom to create their own projects and not be bound to a single motive that a teacher has assigned. I also believe that the benefits of this would outweigh the problems caused by this.

Firstly, when students create something of their own, I believe you can see into their ideas and mindset more-so than if you were to give a basic prompt to babble about. The output would have more enthusiasm if the topic was something that they are passionate about. This may be the case as to why school is difficult among many children, they are unable to open their gates of creativity for basic, corny, and cliche prompts that are assigned to them. Students can put their own twist on a plethora of topics that concern society.

In addition to the last paragraph, students are more likely to put time and effort into something they are concerned with. In my experience with middle school and high school, prompts have been overall boring. I believe that prompts such as: voting, politics, investments, finance, etc. have no business in a high school institution. To reflect on a topic, you must understand, and in my eyes, have experience with said topic.

Another benefit to having a student create their own prompt or project is having your teacher or professor learn a thing or two. It is always good to try new things and let students try things for themselves, who knows if the teacher will find common interest with a students topic. This should be the better alternative for all students who are forced to make persuasive papers about dull subjects.

In spite of these beneficial points there can also be bad things to come with student designed projects. The potential for students to use explicit content is foreseeable without boundaries set by the teacher. The teacher should offer 15-20 diverse prompts for students to use over the summer, or the student can create their own and ask for the teacher's approval before summer break begins. Although this is concerning, I do not feel that this problem is so massive that it should overturn my original statement.

All in all, a students choice is what matters to me. I listed some pros and cons that can help to understand my point of view.