At last it's summer time! I can sleep in everyday and do whatever I please. However, I still have to consider the unpleasant thought of finishing my summer assignments before the end of summer vacation. Although some may say otherwise, summer projects should be student-designed because it gives students the opportunity to choose the material they want to learn and it will motivate students to complete the projects on time rather than wait until the end of the summer.

First of all, school projects should be student-designed because it gives the students the opportunity to choose the material they want to learn which will make the projects more interesting since they will be geared towards their interests. For instance, when I was in 10th grade at Generic_School, I was assigned a project along with a group of students in my AP World History class where we were to research any period of history and make a PowerPoint presentation to present to the class. As a group, we agreed on choosing the Great Depression because we all had a decent amount of background knowledge about the specific topic. Therefore, each group member could contribute their views and researched information to the presentation, meaning there wasn't one member who didn't participate in the project. Furthermore, another instance would be when my sister, Generic_Name, was assigned a project in her orchestra class at Generic_School where she was given the project to find a song online and play it for the class. The thought of choosing her own song brought her so much joy since she could choose a song by some of her favorite artists: Owl City, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry. She decided on choosing the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift becuase it wouldn't be too challenging or to easy for her to play. Each day, leading up to the due date, she practiced for at least an hour so she could play for the class without any mistakes. Generic_Name forgot that she was doing a school project because of how much fun she was having playing the song. Projects don't have to be something to dread completing when they can be easily geared towards the students interests, leading to substantial success in the end.

Additionally, school projects should be student-designed because it movivates students to complete their work on time rather than wait until the end of the summer to tackle the assignments, which will overall boost their performance. For example, In the summer of 2019, I was assiged to read at least one book and prepare to talk about it the next school year. Rather than having to read some random book picked by the school or county, I was able to choose a book that I would actually read for the purpose of entertainment, in contrast to just reading it because it was required. I chose to the novel,

IT, by Stephen King because I enjoy the horror genre and he happens to be one of the most well known horrer fiction writers. I started out reading the book during the first week of summer with no major thoughts, that was until I realized I had been reading for two hours, wanting to read more and more. I became intrigued by the story and wanted to know what would come next. After only a week, I managed to finish the novel, the time flew by so fast because I was genuinly having a good time reading which rarely happens. Another example is when the Korean singer, Generic_Name, on the Korean surivial show known as Produce 101, was given the task during the first week of the competition to choose a dance for her assigned idol group. After congregating with her group, Generic_Name had her mind set on the dance to the song Into The New World by Girls Generation. The song fit perfectly with the group in a sense that the choreography was not too advanced for each of the members to learn, but it still looked smooth and well put together when done well. When the day of the dance battle came, Generic_Name and her group danced to the best of their ability, putting a lot of emotion and hard work into the dance. As a result, her group came in first place which meant that every member in the group was saved from elimination that was to take place that week. When people are given the the task that involves an interest of theirs, they will be likely to excell at that task.

Some may say that when students are given the opportunity to choose what they want to learn, they will take advatage of that and pick something easy or irrelevant to learn. While understandable, that reasoning is flawwed due to the fact that teachers monitor students work in order to keep them on track. For instance, when I was in 7th grade at Generic_School, I chose a topic for my science project that went beyond the realm of 7th grade science. As a result, my teacher, Generic_Name, geared my in the correct direction by giving me a list of topics to choose from that correlated to the currect unit we were learing about. Some may also say that students get discouraged by the thought of summer projects in general, meaning they won't want to work on them at any cost. While understandable, that reasoning is flawed because when students are given the chance to choose something they feel strongly passionate about, they will be far more likely to work towards completing the project. For instance, when my friend, Generic_Name, was given the initiative to find statistics in his AP Statistics class at Generic_School, he chose to research statistics about his favorite game called League of Legends that included the number of people in each country

When given the chance, students can surely succeed and learn a lot of information when the school projects are student-designed. In our society, school work and school activities are predominately controlled by the administration such as teachers and staff, but students have just as equal ideas as everyone else about school work and can possibly better the education system by making school more enjoyable for students all around the world.