For many students, summer projects are a useless task forced upon them by their teachers. These assignments can be detrimental to the continuity of the students' learning. Without the freedom to stray from the normal, one may become expectant of nothing more. Student led assignments give highschoolers the opportunity to be creative in their learning, learn responsibility, and prepare them for the future.

During the school year, students are expected to learn through the guidance of the teacher. While some people enjoy this structure, many feel their creativity is being repressed. A survey done on high schools students, asking about how they feel they have the ability to represent themselves through schoolwork, 75% feel that they do not have the option to express themselves with their current workload. With a self-led summer project students could continue learning through the break, by studying a topic that interests them which, in turn, inspires them to create a more thought out end result.

Responsibility, a skill hopefully learned by students through school, is not easy to become proficient at. And with many teachers setting deadlines and giving extensions, students can lose responsibility without trial and error. A psychological study that followed five students' grades and work style throughout four years portrayed the effect that self-led projects had on students before they left for college. Teenagers who had no control over their learning, while seemingly successful with their grades, lacked development on the section of the brain that controls creativity and responsibility. However, students who worked with their teachers on their course of study had better developed this section. These skills not only help students grow as self-thinkers, but as responsible and thoughtful human beings.

In many ways, the future for today's children is unlike the life they live now in school. There will no longer be someone to give them instructions for every task, and many projects are completely controlled and monitored by the person creating it. School is designed to prepare students for the real world, yet many find themselves lost by the time they must complete their own study or presentation in college. While it may be difficult to recreate these circumstances in high school, a summer project gives students adequate time to thoroughly research and involve themselves in their project. One may find themselves discovering new topics that they were not previously aware of. Whereas without the freedom to follow their own direction, they would become trapped with the same topic and format as everyone else.

Free thinking is an important skill to have once you're an adult, and student-designed projects support the formation of this skill. The opportunity to express themselves through their learning is essential to the development of useful, creative habits that can be extremely helpful for the future of the world.