The school librarian was awesome! She asked me some really good questions about my topic that I hadn't thought of before and she had a list of resources all ready to go because my teacher has been giving this assignment, apparently, for years! The questions helped me to think through my topic a bit so that I could begin to create an outline. Next, I have to head home and start reading and taking notes. This paper will come together pretty well, but there's a fair amount of work to do. I got on it right away. I have some time. I can get this done and it won't be a half bad paper.
This is a fairly straight ahead scenario. The librarian has seen this assignment multiple times and can point the student in the right direction pretty easily. To be done properly, the student is going to still have to do a bunch of reading and learn enough to be able to put together a decent essay, but they won't have to do too much in terms of finding and evaluating sources as this work has been done in previous years by older students and the librarian.
Likely, the teacher will complain about having to read stacks of cookie-cutter essays, all with very similar sources, but they kind of set this up with the assignment. The students will get through the process and perhaps do well, but this is not the assignment that they will remember for years to come or that will connect them with some hidden passion that will define the direction of their life. It is a straight up assignment that gets the students writing about a very specific topic and doing the reading on knowledge building on their own. Deeper than a lecture, but not terribly engaging.