You find an obvious subtopic. It's not terribly interesting, but you know that you can write an essay on this and get descent marks. You do a quick search of the library and the web and cobble together a thesis and annotated bibligraphy for your proposal. The teacher pass the proposal, but doesn't say much. You guess that there isn't too much to say. It's pretty generic.
You spend the weekend reading, taking notes, and writing your outline. You're pretty happy with it. It takes a couple of more days to write the paper and proof it, but you get the paper done ahead of schedule. You hand it in early and move on.
There's little connection with the topic here so there is little engagement. The focus is the product and the marks, not learning anything about the topic. In this scenario, the student sees no relevance of the topic to her life. Many of our highest achieving students have mastered this scenario and spend their school lives skimming the surface of the content they are expected to learn, dipping their hands in the water at the most important points, but letting the water slip through their fingers as soon as they're done with it.