text: Student-designed summer projects allows the students to better engage in the learning process. Students in America struggle throughout their life attending school while accepting the burden of friendships, family and other stresses and anxieties. Summer becomes that safe haven for them, to completely decompress from their issues and take a break from the mental strain of schools, with all the tests, exams and projects that're encompassed within it. Students who are allowed the opportunity to design their own project become eager to create a product which displays their learning over the summer. Once in my freshman year, I was given an option to complete a teacher-assigned book report, or to construct an independent book report. Being allowed this opportunity made me eager to chose a book that satisfied my interests, and not be punished to endure reading a four hundred page book about trivial history. This point illustrates the impact that student-designed summer projects can instill, without the students feeling punished by the school. Learning should be a process of critical thinking and analysis, however when this process is interrupted by an external predetermined body it is detrimental to one's education.