Having students complete projects over the summer is a practical way to maintain mental sharpness over the summer. With that said, very few students are likely to enjoy having to do this during their break from school. The very least that can be done about having students complete such a tedious task is to allow them to design it, as students will be able to control the creativity, difficulty, and completion time for these projects. This is to prevent as much resistance against the project as possible, as well as encourage students to actively participate in and complete the projects. Having the projects made and designed by teachers will only discourage students from finding enjoyment in completing them, and it's likely that less students will complete the projects at all.

As far as creativity goes, students behind the design of the project can find options that can make the completion of the project more personalized to what each student is interested in while still having general structure of what needs to be done. The same book related projects that are forced upon students grow old, and progressively more inconvenient, very quickly, so finding alternate project ideas could be very beneficial to the students and teachers alike. That concept of creativity applies especially to the choice of school subject. Whether it's art, engineering, music, or one of many other core classes and electives, students deserve the choice of how they want their projects to be made. Creativity is the least problematic aspect of project design, as the arguably more troubling decision is project difficulty.

The difficulty of completing these projects is usually predetermined by the teachers or school board, depending on who's tasked with creating the projects. Unfortunately, in this situation, the difficulty is left up to the students to decide upon. Having students in charge of designing a project that stretches over two months or more is likely to be inconvenient and far easier than it should be to keep the minds of the student body active. The only logical way to navigate this issue is to have a teacher created council of students in charge of determining every aspect of the project's design, with only some input from the general population of students. While this doesn't allow the student body to be completely autonomous in the creation of the summer project, it provides a fair balance of difficulty that caters to all students. Lastly, determining the amount of time allotted to complete the project should most certainly be left to the students to determine.

A large amount of the overall student body, from my experience, has a problem with procrastination. The first response most of those students would give to the issue of the completion date would likely be to allow the whole summer to complete the project and to turn in said projects during the first week or so of school. That's a partially good idea, but that would only result in hundreds of students rushing and staying up all night during the last week before the due date, followed by turning in low quality work. While it may be unpleasant for the hundreds of thousands of American procrastinators, the student body tasked with handling all of these aspects of the project design should have bi-weekly check ins for the projects. That would be done by having students send some sort of concrete evidence, such as photographs, in to wherever the school asks that students turn in their final project. That process would be graded and taken into account for the final grade of the project, thus increasing productivity, assuring the final project is done on time, and breaking the project into segments so students aren't forced to complete substantial amounts of work at once against their will.

Due to the question of creative freedom, difficulty, and allotted completion time, students should be given the freedom to design a project that stretches over such an important mental break. As unpleasant as that idea may be for teachers and schools as a whole, it's only fair that the students are given that option. Not all students are interested in the same things so having schools create one generic project for all students to complete is teaching students not to be unique. That idea also doesn't even remotely help students prepare for their futures unless the project just happens to pertain to a small group of students' future career interests. Students should be the ones benefiting from this, so it only makes sense to have students design it for themselves.