A student's freedom from the limitations of the classroom's necessary rules during the summer provides new opportunities for them to learn in dynamic ways. While, in the classroom, a teacher's control of a regulated learning program is unavoidable in order to teach such a broad audience in such a short time, there are no such factors outside the classroom. The variable shape of a student's summer project provides a unique opportunity for the student's specific educational needs to be accounted for - which a teacher-designed project wouldn't be able to take advantage of. Education during the summer should be student-designed, because the student can pander to their learning style and interest, it can reinvigorate the student with a passion for learning, and it instills a certain independence from adult figures that will be necessary later in life.

Students learn in many different ways. Psychological studies have shown that there are different types of learning, from spacial to audio to visual, and students learn better in some ways than others. A rising awareness of mental health has also led to the understanding that brains process information in different ways, so students with autism or ADHD don't get the same results from the conventional classroom practices. Student-designed summer projects would be able to take all these different specifications into account when structuring the project, so visual learners could visit exhibitions while attention deficient kids could apply whatever technique they need to help them study (listening to music for some, a totally still room for others). The dynamic nature of a student-designed project would be an advantage to the kids who need to learn in a different way from the regulated, cookie-cutter methods that teachers use. As well, a student-designed project could angle more in the direction of what the student wants to learn about. Students are forced to spend hours of a day paying attention to subject matters that they don't care for in order to get a generalized education. However, the point of a summer project is education itself, not education towards the goal of a degree. Students would be able to design a project that deepens their interest in a topic, broadens their knowledge in a niche industry. Education would feel more like a hobby than a chore if a student could account for what they learn and how they want to learn it.

A student-designed summer project would be exciting for students, because the agency over their education would allow them to create highly specified and perfect learning courses for themselves. Going through a program that teaches them in a way that they both understand and enjoy would be exciting and possibly life changing. The modern school system is the most monstrous source of stress on the childhood and adolescent mind. Even though learning should be acknowledged as a privilege, wonder, and necessity, it becomes a burden to students. Between the forced socialization of the classroom environment, administrations that care more for policy than the experience of the individual, a constantly building workload, and a set of rules and grades that are constantly judging and disciplining behavior, schooling becomes nightmarish for students. The poor environment weighs so heavily on the minds of children that they often develop mental illnesses or complexes, and, in extreme cases, are driven to suicide over poor grades (which, in the grand scheme of life, should be menial). Student-designed summer projects would be a way to show students that learning can be a growing and nurturing experience, instead of a murderous one. That change in outlook in the mind of a student could make all the difference in that student's optimism, well being, and quality of life for the rest of their schooling career.

One of the main focuses of school is to prepare a student for adulthood. While school accomplishes that in many ways, it fails to teach students how to truly act independently, because their lives are always in some way being influenced by adults that hold real power. A student-designed summer project would fill this void of education, however, because it encourages students to make choices for themselves and then to carry through with those choices in order to make them a reality. Placing the responsibility of their own education on a student would encourage them to think critically and organizationally in order to create and then implement a strategy. The limitless possibilities of the project, because the design is given over to the student, would teach them how to narrow down vague concepts into specific plans. Even arranging for certain resources to be supplied, depending on the project, would show the student how to control moving parts - whether that manifests in asking their mother to buy eggs from the grocery store or in biking to the library to check out the necessary reading materials. Students are rarely prepared for the autonomy of college and the time-managing aspects of adulthood, because they're used to their parents or teachers doing things for them. Forcing a student to design a project that they then have to complete would be an introduction into the decision making of adulthood.

A student-designed summer project would help students grow, because they could change their views on the operations of education in the span of a few months. They would grow to be stronger learners, more persistent observers, and more assertive leaders. Since life is really a process of learning--whether that means learning skills, academics, or something else entirely--an easy relationship with the concept of learning is the most valuable thing for a person to develop. Student-designed projects are an easy opportunity to encourage and teach that kind of relationship, and students would develop an outlook on learning that would improve the way they interact with the world for the rest of their lives.