A summer project can be a great way to keep students actively engaged in their academics while providing them with a way to explore outside interests in their summer life. many schools have adopted this practice and have begun assigning summer projects to students as a way to keep them academically stimulated during their long time off, the big question however is whether teachers should design the project or whether students should instead. The goal of this is to help students to not fall into a summer slum that inevitably effects their performance at the beginning of the school year, which will start them off on a good track to succeed the rest of the year, a common way students fail is simply "tripping on their own feet" son to speak, they start off wrong and never quite catch back up. While teacher designed projects can be more well planned for grading and more generalized, student designed projects can arise more creativity, and interest, along with their brains learning more cause of this active stimulation.

With students controlling the project they are free to come up with more creative and well thought project subjects with more thorough research to support it. This is because when a child is given a choice, the drive towards what they are doing is substantially then when the subject is chosen for them, because their minds subconsciously seek control and when this control is given they are more likely to gain sense of tenacity towards the goal. When this tenacity is applied to a choice their minds blossom with ideas and it becomes easier for these ideas to be expressed and put onto a paper or into a presentation that they will soon be able to show their peers. If there is one main thing that drives a teenage mind it is acceptance from peers and those who share a social surrounding, this drive will push them to express themselves to help show off who they are to the people that they want to know, this will also help them to strengthen their confidence is the exploration of new subjects which will greatly improve self performance in other aspects of life.

It is a proven fact that is both children and adults , an elevated interest in a topic directly correlates to success, if the student controls what they study then their interest will increase, ergo so will success. Not to mention the mental stimulation will greatly help the students overall ability to retain information and store what is and isnt useful even if what they a doing the project on isnt directly academic it is academically helping them. In doing these projects they are training their subconscious mind how to retain, store, and apply a topic in which they are researching. when doing these projects the students must actually want to do the work and must want to know more or show what they already do and the best way to do that is given them "guarded" control, by "guarded" meaning give them control of the subject and content but not so much the requirements. This will provide interest in the subject control of the direction but easily graded work.

In allowing students to decide the topic you are allowing their brains to become willing to be stimulated, the human attention span is a mere 10 minutes. This means in order for students to continue to learn from these projects they must first be greatly interested in what it is the are researching, the brain must be able to cling to the topic so it isnt as easily swayed to a new more "exciting" activity like watching TV or playing video games. When a student spends their summer learning alongside the fun they become more willing to learn because then they still have fun whereas many students feel trapped with the day to day felling school cause this is what makes their attention span so short lived.

A student, if given a summer project, should not have to view it as a burden more so an opportunity to express what they know about a subject they love. Students should be the ones to design a summer project so that the end result id more reflective of their mind and not the mind teachers are trying to effect that way teachers and peers have a better understanding of the individuals and they interests. These projects should be given to students with a length requirement but not a subject or material requirement a simple " give me 3 pages" and leave the rest to the students.