text: One of the main focuses of school is to prepare a student for adulthood. While school accomplishes that in many ways, it fails to teach students how to truly act independently, because their lives are always in some way being influenced by adults that hold real power. A student-designed summer project would fill this void of education, however, because it encourages students to make choices for themselves and then to carry through with those choices in order to make them a reality. Placing the responsibility of their own education on a student would encourage them to think critically and organizationally in order to create and then implement a strategy. The limitless possibilities of the project, because the design is given over to the student, would teach them how to narrow down vague concepts into specific plans. Even arranging for certain resources to be supplied, depending on the project, would show the student how to control moving parts - whether that manifests in asking their mother to buy eggs from the grocery store or in biking to the library to check out the necessary reading materials. Students are rarely prepared for the autonomy of college and the time-managing aspects of adulthood, because they're used to their parents or teachers doing things for them. Forcing a student to design a project that they then have to complete would be an introduction into the decision making of adulthood.