It's a simple decision. Between a master of a profession who has spent 4-plus years honing their craft, and a child too naive to understand the complicated things in life. To exercise full understanding and demonstrate significant levels of mastery, summer projects should be created by the teachers themselves and not the students. Lack of effort, poor management skills, and incompetence as to what knowledge must be gathered all lead to the students' demise in creating a summer project tailored to them. As much as students want to manufacture their own vessels of learning, it only feels right that they allow the trained professionals to handle it.

A big reason as to why students shouldn't be allowed to make their own summer projects is because of the season. With all the fun and activities students may be experiencing over break, they won't have any willingness to quit and sit down to do schoolwork. That's why if a student were to design their own project, I can only envision a project so obnoxiously easy that anyone can do it. An example of the laziness of students would be this one moment in 7th grade. A friend of mine realized that he hadn't done the summer assignment for the previous year, which was to read a book and provide a summary. What he thought of instead was to pick the easiest book imaginable, Dr. Seuss, and write his report on that.

Furthermore, students are oblivious as to the specific pieces of information that will be needed for the following school year. If a class the previous year was in math, than a student-designed project on 2-step equations wouldn't be able to accurately prepare them for whatever rigorous curriculum (matrices, per say) is being presented the following year, therefore not growing. This is because they lack the understanding as to what exactly the following course is going to emphasize. This is countered by presenting teacher-designed summer projects. By having a trained individual develop it, the required knowledge necessary for the student to comprehend is presented in a way where the student is not only able to reinforce their knowledge, but also expand it.

Finally, the penultimate reason as to why teacher-designed project are far superior than student-led ones is because of time management. Plenty of students are masters of procrastination, putting off one assignment not due for awhile then cramming and stressing a day before the due date. I myself am guilty of this. If a summer project created by student it assigned, then the belief of the student is that of "Oh, I made it tailored to me so therefore it won't be hard at all to do." This ideology creates a maelstrom of anxiety that is fully unleashed as summer winds down, as the student hasn't even touched it. An exhibition of this ticking time bomb was a personal experience that occurred not too long ago. A 10 page history paper was assigned to my class and I in early February. I wasn't worried at all, as the due date had been set for the first week of March. This lack of worry snowballed and created an avalanche of haste, as in the 3 days prior to the due date I was forced to sit at my computer and subject my self to the cruel and unusual punishment of essay writing, often 3 hours at a time.

In essence, it would be an absolute catastrophe if summer projects were designed by students. Students lack the expertise in making assignments difficult enough to produce growth, understanding the level of intelligence they need to meet for the following year, and time management. All summer projects should be left to be designed by those who get paid to do it, teachers.