OK, you've got coffee, snacks and a big "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. You're in this for the long haul. You go back and re-read the textbook. You do a web search, read a couple of Wikipedia articles, follow up with some of the links in the references section of those articles and generally try to pull in as much information as possible. At a certain point, things start to make sense. It's still kind of a wierd essay question, but at least you understand it now. Further reading of some of the school's online database articles gets you to a point where you think that you could start to write. You have your notes and want to pull a couple of books in from the school library. Good time to get some sleep.
The next day, you hit the library and find those books that you were looking for. You talk to the librarian and get a couple of other suggestions. You spend the next couple of nights reading and taking notes. By the weekend you have an outline and you write the paper. You proof-read it and realize that it isn't such a bad paper in the end and you're glad that you jumped right in on this and got it started. You've been here with other assignments and didn't start research until the night before. That didn't work out well!!!
You had in the essay, reasonably sure that you will at least get a passable mark on it.