To me the main difference is, if you finish a passable version of your assignment early, that's just... finishing a passable version of your assignment.
Maybe I'm a few years behind (like rosencrantz said, language drift - and other people in the channel gave different examples of how they used it too) but to me a bus pass always has regret implicit. "I wanted this story to be better, but at least I have a bus pass," and people used to only say it very close to or after the deadline.
It is not a bad thing to have a solid-but-could-be-improved story weeks ahead of deadline. It's wonderful actually. But given how the term used to be used, it's like saying "This isn't my best effort but it's acceptable, I've come to terms with that" when you have weeks to make it better, because it used to mean "I had bigger ambitions and I scaled them down" or "I am acutely aware of the rough spots BUT it's postable".
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Maybe I'm a few years behind (like rosencrantz said, language drift - and other people in the channel gave different examples of how they used it too) but to me a bus pass always has regret implicit. "I wanted this story to be better, but at least I have a bus pass," and people used to only say it very close to or after the deadline.
It is not a bad thing to have a solid-but-could-be-improved story weeks ahead of deadline. It's wonderful actually. But given how the term used to be used, it's like saying "This isn't my best effort but it's acceptable, I've come to terms with that" when you have weeks to make it better, because it used to mean "I had bigger ambitions and I scaled them down" or "I am acutely aware of the rough spots BUT it's postable".