As I sit in a room surrounded by other teenagers, I contemplate the effectiveness of summer projects designed by these students. Most of them would create a meaningless project that took minimal time to create, and even less to complete. And although many student projects would probably be more fun than ones created by a teacher, they would miss the purpose of summer projects- to prepare the student for the coming year's courses.

The majority of students do not enjoy having summer projects. Because of this, if students were allowed to design their own projects for the summer, they would create easy projects for themselves in order to complete as little work as possible over the summer. While most students would be happier doing a student-designed project, few would actually be willing to put in the time and effort to design a good project, leading to a summer filled with pointless work that fails to stimulate the student's mind and prepare them for their classes in the fall.

A major problem with student-designed projects is the students' lack of knowledge about the coursework they will be studying in the next year. Although a student project may be fun, it is unlikely to adequately prepare the students for their classes. The purpose of summer projects are to prepare the student for the next year's work; the teacher knows what will be studied and is therefore better able to prepare material for the summer. Teachers are also more aware of how much time it takes for students to complete a project and therefore will create a project better suited for the time over the summer.

Teachers are expected to create quality projects for their students to complete, which are not full of busy work with no real meaning. Because teachers are both paid to design and teach curriculum to students, and enjoy the subject they teach, they are more likely to put time and effort into creating a meaningful summer project. Students, on the other hand, often do not share the teacher's passion for their subject, and have no motive for designing a good project. If a student's passion is math, but they have been told to design a summer project to prepare for the next year's English class, they are less likely to spend time on the project, because they do not enjoy it and have no interest in pursuing a career in English.

If students were to design their own summer projects, this would mean that each year there would be new projects. New projects each year would create non-uniform summer learning, meaning that each year of students would enter their new classes with widely varying knowledge from the summer. This ends up being harder on the teacher, who has no way of knowing if the students are prepared to begin class, and may cut into learning time if the teacher is required to review what was supposed to have been learned over the summer because the students did not adequately cover the material for the summer when they designed their projects.

The best option for creating summer projects is to have the teachers design projects for their incoming students to complete the summer prior to taking the teacher's class. Although student projects would be fun and easy, they miss the point of doing summer projects and would end up as extra busy-work for students to complete, rather than a meaningful assignment meant to prepare them for the year ahead.