text: Student-designed projects allow students to be passionate about the topic they are working on, causing them to work efficiently. When students are assigned teacher-designed projects, they are not usually excited to work on the assignment. Additionally, they do not value it as important, leaving the work until the last minute. For example, in 7th grade, my Life Science class was assigned a project about the deer population in Virginia. Many of the students did not actively work on the project, as they found the topic boring. Because they did not understand the relevance of the topic, the students were not passionate about the project. An independent project assigned in my AP Lang class, however, had a different result. The assignment was to write a research paper on a social issue that interested us. Because students were able to write about an issue that interests them, they actively worked on the project. Being passionate about a project also affects a student's performance in class. For example, because the majority of the class was not passionate about the deer project, they did not do well on it. However, on the AP Lang assignment, the majority of the class did well on related assignments, as they were passionate about the projects they worked on.