A student's life should be lived by a student's choice. While there are a select handful of students who yearn to increase their knowledge day in and day out at school, the majority despise it. Due to the lack of free time students are left with after their school day, weekends and breaks are their knights in shining armor that will save them from the prison they call school. One of the breaks most looked foward to is summer break. This three month halt in tests, note taking and projects is sheer paradise in the eyes of students. However, some deem it neccessary to continue the assigned curriculum into this break to ensure the adherence of crucial knowledge to the students' brain. With that being said, these summer projects should be devised in a manner that will benefit both the teacher and the student to the maximum. And so, to assure their continued learning during their break, summer projects should be student-designed rather than teacher-designed in order to maximize productivity, to enhance their leadership skills and to allow for students to enjoy their project, and hence, giving them a break.

The majority of students innately have a distaste for following directions and taking orders from higher authorities. As a result, when students are constantly ordered to work on numerous projects throughout the year, they will complete it with reluctance. Furthermore, their lack of desire to complete this project will lead to a lack of favorable content, meaning the students will not complete it to the best of their ability. While the teacher may need to put forth guidelines, in order to prevent the students intentionally procrastinating their assignment and turning in mediocre work, the students should be able to partially lead the prompt for the project. When the students are presented with a project they find interesting they will be eager to present their optimal work despite the activities they may be doing during the break.

Taking leadership and making self-guided decisions are skills that students must acquire at an early age in order to succeed later on in life. Although the teacher may portray a leadership role in the classroom, it is quite difficult for the students to replicate the actions they see until they are given the chance. Allowing for students to make the decision on how they will plan their summer project gives them this chance. Simliar to a teacher constructing her lessons, with a student-designed summer project, the students will have to form an agenda based around curriculum and time provided in order to successfully complete it in due time. Ultimately, students will have to make decisions for themselves and organize their daily life giving them an advantage.

Students grow rather lackidasical when dealing with a mundane routine back to back. During the school year, students spend eight to ten months being bombarded by the same tests and the same essay prompts and the same book entries. Summer break, to them, is an escape from all of that pressure. Although it is neccessary to make sure that students retain the information they acquired that year, the students should be able to decide how the reestablishing of ideas and topics they learned. With guidelines and rules given by the teacher, the students can potentially produce work they are proud of and enjoyed working on.

While it may seem rather bizarre to let students decide their own projects, the idea can be fruitful and beneficial for the students and teachers in the end. When the last bell rings for the year released them for summer break, the students bolt out of their school doors and practically forget all that they have learned. In order to prevent that, many teachers have implemented summer projects to assure the continued learning and retainment of their knowledge. However, during the summer when students are on vacation and living in paradise, the last matter they want to worry about is another project assigned by their teacher. Consequently, the students may potentially complete it without care to discard the thought of having work to do. This is ultimately counterintuative to the purpose of said projects. To fix this possible mishap, students should be able to design their projects with guidelines from their teacher so they enjoy the process of completing it while still enjoying their break, ehnace their organization and leadership skills and produce work to the best of their ability, With this method, the students can retain the information deemed neccessary by the teacher and the teacher is able to see this effort and productivity they put into it throughout the school year.