Many students across the country can relate to the struggle of returning to school at the end of summer and attempting to complete a review packet, only to realize that, over summer break, they had forgotten what they learned. To prevent his from occurring, schools have began to assign summer work to students. Some schools require students to complete summer projects to assure that they continue learning during their break. However, students often times find these teacher-designed and regulated projects boring and tedious. These summer projects should be student-designed to increase student interest and motivation while they work on this mandatory project, and to teach students how to be independent researchers, allowing them to continue learning during their break and providing them with the ability to pursue the topic if desired.

If a student had the ability to design their own summer projects, it would not only increase the student's rate of productivity, it would also increase the quality of the results. In addition, a student's desire in researching their topic will allow them to retain this knowledge and continue learning during their break. Students often groan at the idea of completing a mandatory project, whether it is in-school or out of school. Furthermore, teacher-designed topics fail to provide students with the ability to research a topic that they are interested in. This depletes a student's desire to complete the assigned summer project. Students would find summer projects more enjoyable if they had the ability to design their project and chose their topic. This would, in turn, increase the students' motivation and desire to conduct the project. Furthermore, the more time and energy that a student puts into their project, the better the overall quality of the project and of the results. This would occur if a student had the desire to do the project, which stems from the student's interest in the project. For example, many students across the United States complete an in-school science-project. This can be compared to a summer project because it has a similar process. First, students are either assigned a science topic by a teacher or they are told to chose a topic based on given criteria. Based on first-hand experience and student feedback, students enjoy conducting and completing the project if they had a choice of picking the prompt. This is because the students are able to choose a topic that interests them instead of being forced to research a topic that they are uninterested in. In turn, the quality of the science projects also improves in student picked topics due to the fact that students have a desire to spend more time on them.

Allowing students to design their own projects teaches them how to be independent researchers and promotes creativity by forcing students to plan procedures for a project. When teachers design projects for students, they include everything: topic, materials, time line, and procedure. The student rarely has to conduct any planning before completing the project. This takes away the research and the independence aspect of a project. The teachers babies the students through the process and fails to teach them how to decide the procedure, time line, and materials on their own. If a student isn't given the chance to plan out their own project, they will never learn how to. Planning also promotes and excersizes students' creativity. They are able to find new, creative procedures to tackle a project. As stated previously, students have more desire in researching topics that they are interested in. Student-designed projects would promote advanced and in-depth research among students. As a result students exercise independent research skills, which provides students the with the skills to continue research and promotes continuous learning.

Few may argue that students cannot be trusted in designing a project that is relevant to the curriculum and that allows for students to learn at the same time. Furthermore, students may be inclined to design a project that is too simple for them. This may easily be countered by the teacher. Just because students would be able to design their projects, doesn't mean that the teacher doesn't oversee their actions. Traditionally, when students are given an in-class assignment to design their own projects, their ideas must be approved by a teacher. The teacher also provides the students with guidelines to center their project topic around. This process would be the same for a summer assignment. Before school lets out, students would show the teacher their project plan and confirm that it follows the guidelines while being challenging enough for students. This allows for the students to enjoy their project and learn at the same time. Few may also argue that allowing the students to design their summer projects would result in mad time management since students would also control when certain tasks may need to be completed. Teachers also have the ability to counter this by providing a calender for when certain parts of the project need to be turned in. One teacher would assign a summer project with the same guidelines for a whole class, which allows for the projects to have fairly similar requirements. This makes it easy for a teacher to create certain turn-in dates throughout the summer. Implementing turn-in dates would decrease the students' ability to procrastinate and forces them to manage their time wisely.

Summer-projects are an excellent way for students to continue to learn over break while enjoying themselves. They are also a variation in school work as they provide more freedom and flexibility than in-class work. Consequentially, summer projects should be student-designed to increase student interest and motivation in the project, which allows them to care about the quality of research and work that they conduct.