text: Summer is the only substantially long break that students receive off of homework, assignments and tests. Through the months of August until June, school does not cease. Almost every week, robotic-like students must wake up early Monday morning, suffer through eight hours of sitting and listen to a teacher go on about something like, why did the War of 1812 happen, how to dissect a frog, or solve for x. Five days are filled with this repeating schedule with two days to spare, and in my experience one of those days is set aside for weekend homework. No matter how much someone loves school and learning, eventually they need a break. Summer is the time to cut loose, hang out with friends, travel somewhere you've never been before and relax. Almost everyone has seen in a movie how students throw their books and papers up in the air as soon as that last day bell rings. Imagine receiving a final project the last day of school, requiring students to turn in on the first day of their next year of school. Now if that project was teacher-designed it might require a student to: 'write an eight page essay on the effects of propaganda use in your society' or 'create a tri-fold and 3-D display of a past, indigenous, tribe's village'. Just picturing these assignments make some people cringe. However, if summer projects were student-designed, people could create a piece of work that interests them and hopefully enables them to put in more effort on the assignment because it wouldn't feel as much like a school task. Student-designed projects could focus on what students question or wonder about in their day to day lives, peaking their interests and making the task feel more fun and creative. Students could receive a broad outline like 'write an essay' or 'create a display', and turn it into a unique piece that expresses themselves; something like a paper on endangered animals.