Summer vacation, the eye of the storm between last school year and the next. Summer vacation is the period students get to relax and enjoy their time off, feel and experience warm weather, or hang out with friends. Whatever it may be that students do on this time off it's important they feel in control, and what they do makes good use of their time. Unfortunately some students don't get the same luxury as others and must complete school projects assigned by teachers or schools. When teachers assign these projects, students may feel very constricted on what they have to do, their creativity may be pushed to the side, and it may not even get completed because some students could lack the motivation to do it at all. The solution to this? A student assigned project is the best fix to the problems experienced by many and can make the task more digestible for a student, and perhaps an enjoyable experience.

Students often get overwhelmed by large projects, the colossal tasks feel like a burden to a student. Even when stretched out over a two to three month period, it can seem unapproachable in the moment. When the student can decide on what they want to do a project on, it feels like a much more realistic goal. Often teachers will give a packet of guidelines and requirements, this leaves very little wiggle room in what a student can add to a preset project. Students will commonly be assigned a very specific subject or topic, it can feel like one's summer is at the whim of a slip of a paper in a hat. It's almost demoralizing to get a topic that has little information to find on it or is buried deep in old and musty books, not touched for years. Another problem isn't just mental walls, but as well as "pay-walls" where a user must pay to access information on a subject on the internet that can't be found anywhere else. When all of these problems are at play it can feel absolutely impossible to complete a summer project.

The biggest Pro to be found with a student chosen project is that the creativity derived from choosing and designing one's own poster board, PowerPoint, or creation. The process of choosing, researching, and creating a project of a student's choice can be incredibly rewarding. To a student, it feels like they have free will in what they're working on, and that they are influencing the outcome of their own work. Some students may never get this opportunity to work on something at their own free will, this may make them feel very trapped in the monotony of their schoolwork. As a student becomes and adult, if they don't get enough opportunities such as these, they may never have developed the free thinking aspect of working on something. There are plenty of books or objects of media that feel very flat and uninteresting, but instilling the idea of creativity and free thought in school can be very beneficial from a process such as allowing a self chosen project in the time of academic study.

A point to be brought up in this discussion should be that of "Where to draw the line of when the amount of leeway given is too much." This is a great point because a student can get lost in not knowing what to choose or the guideline given was too vague. While this does seem to be a realistically good question, a teacher most likely wouldn't give an assignment like that. One example of this is a book project where a student is assigned to find any non-fiction book detailing a person, and then create a presentation on them, with a rubric to grade the PowerPoint. This seems to be a very good example, where a student needs to do the research but the possibilities of who a student can read about is immense. If a student embraces the freedom this project allows a great presentation can flourish and spark passion about this assignment. When a student cares about what they're working on they will have the motivation to come back to it time and time again to complete it, not getting lost in the possibilities of choice.

Many students daydream about what they'll do with their summer, the last thing a school should do is weigh that experience down with a monotonous project. It should be the student's job to choose the topic of their project, not a teacher's or the school's. It's unfortunate how often a project will be assigned for a student, as it snuffs creativity and can feel very challenging for a student to work through. If schools do care about how a student matures and develops their critical thinking, free will, and creativity, student chosen projects should not be rare, but commonplace. The only way to promote free and creative thinking is to have more self chosen projects, and summer projects would be the perfect place to start.