Students often complain about having homework, regardless of what time of year it is. Summer break is usually a time for students to relax without the fear of having to do any school work. They do not know that in the long run, having take home projects will be beneficial to their school, and life, careers. Through doing summer projects, students receive more learning opportunities and help create a sense of organization and time management. Students who collaborate with teachers on putting together these projects will help them be more willing and enthusiastic about doing them over their summer break.

Summer projects give students an open opportunity to learn new things before starting a new year of school. Researching and putting together a project of all the information one has learned is a great way to gain more knowledge that may be crucial for their next year of classes. Eigth grade year, before school ended, our teacher told us there would be a summer project that our whole grade had to complete before we entered ninth grade. All of us were not enthusiastic about this information, we did a lot of complaining. Our teacher then told us that we would, as a group, decide on a project. Many options were presented to us. Projects on the Roman Empire, Hinduism, Greek Mythology, and even the Egyptian Empire were all options for us to choose from. After many minutes of arguing and ruling out options one by one, the class came to the decision of Greek mythology. It was required that we work in groups and collaborate on the project. Over the summer, my group would have meet up's and Skype sessions to find ways to make our project more interesting. I enjoyed this project more than I thought I would. Mythology was very interesting and it gave me something to do over our long break. Also, It helped me with the first unit of our world studies class, which was based upon the Greek Gods, Godesses, and tales of ancient greece. By deciding as a class, we ultimately chose a project that we all enjoyed to do, and it gave us an advantage to have already known things by the time we reached ninth grade.

Organization and time management are two skills that highschoolers and adults find beneficial to have when it comes to doing any type of work. Our summer project on mythology was time consuming, but our group knew it had to be done. At the beginning of summer, the group I was in decided that every week, on Wednesday night, we would either meet up or video chat to work on and research our project for at least an hour and a half. This helped us manage our time and priorities with other things we had to do in life. We spent the first half of our Wednesday nights researching many of the tales of ancient Greece and the Gods and Godesses associated with them. Our second half of Wednesday's was dedicated to putting together our creative elements of our project. We assigned eachother different mini projects to do, and worked together on creating a large tri-fold poster dedicated to the basic facts of our project. By creating this plan, we managed to get our project done with two weeks left before school would start. It taught me to be deligent in my work and how to be organized while also working with other people.

Some students, and even teachers may argue that summer break is meant for the students to enjoy their time off and relax without worry and stress of homework. I think that while homework and projects may be stressful, If it is something I somewhat enjoy, it will help me push through the work and gain knowledge that I may need in the future. Students will not always have summer break, and after their education, we will have to spend almost everyday working. It is good to get into the habit of starting and finishing tasks on time, because in the future, many of us will need the skills and characteristics to succeed in our jobs and careers.

Students who decide and do summer projects will be presented with chalenges, but being able to gain knowledge and have fun while doing it will always be a good idea. To teach students how to manage their time and priorities will help them in future situations and create a long lasting affect on the way they go about working on projects and turning on their best work on time.