text: Summer projects purpose is to continue the growth of your mind when you are out of the classroom for about 90 days. A lot can happen to adolescents over the summer, a lot of things that anyone who is not in the same phase of life can truly understand. Many teenagers find sanity with their peers and friends in this time frame of growing up. As seen and extensively studied by Erik Erikson, Erikson came to the consensus that when you are going through the school-age stage of life you begin to pull away from your parents and adults to find yourself and find your independence. In result, you grow more drawn to your friends and peers, due to them understanding the phase of development you are going through. The connection students have with each other is something that can not be matched by teachers. No matter the background or clique a student is in they all have one major characteristic in common that connects them, they are all students. Teachers have not been in school in years and they don't connect with the same things as this generation does. Teachers did not have the same technology, pop culture, or even the same societal standards as today students have. Student-designed projects will create a project they know is going to reach their student peers in a way that connects to them and the modern day times because they are experiencing it, along with them.