<p>My S intended to write his EE over the summer and spent a little bit of time on it–just enough to define the topic and track down reference material–then got busy with other things. When the fall came around, he was even busier. He missed all the intermediate deadlines for getting feedback from his teachers, and barely got something in on time for the drop dead deadline. So not an example of great planning, nor was the product anything close to the best he was capable of, but it was good enough–he got the IB diploma and learned something doing the essay in spite of himself. I do think the other things he did instead were more valuable to him in the long run than spending more time on the EE would have been. No one has ever asked for his grade on the EE, which wasn’t even available until long after college acceptances were determined, and no one other than a teacher, his mom, and the IB graders have ever read it. It doesn’t have to be the high school equivalent of a PhD thesis–just think of it like a term paper that has to satisfy a particular rubric.</p>