You've got it more or less right, although it sounds like what you're describing is that you already have multiple lessons completed (beyond Lesson 1). Per the requirement that students only move onto the next lesson/challenge after having its prerequisites marked as complete via official critique, students are not permitted to get a bunch of lessons done ahead of time, and then submit them all for feedback. We don't allow this because it would give students no opportunity to apply the feedback they've received, and in turn would result in the same issues having to be called out multiple times. Since we provide official critique at a base price that does not cover what we pay our TAs to provide that feedback (in a desire to balance both being financially accessible to students with more limited budgets, and to ensure that we are still paying our TAs well for their time, experience, and effort) official critique is subjected to many restrictions intended to ensure our TAs' time is being used efficiently, so that we do not needlessly waste resources.

So generally a student who's starting fresh will complete their Lesson 1 work, after which point they'll decide whether to go with free community feedback or paid official critique. If they decide on official critique, they'll get their credit, submit their work, and receive their feedback. If there are issues to be addressed, they'll be assigned revisions (which are included in the original credit cost in the vast majority of cases, unless they rushed or otherwise ignored critical instructions/requirements, and is not subjected to a 14 day cooldown which only covers new submissions). Once their work is marked as complete, they're sent onto the 250 box challenge. For 14 days after that, they will not be able to submit work for official critique, though a student getting the work done within that period would generally be a red flag and strongly suggest that they may have rushed.

The 14 day cooldown pushes students to avoid rushing their work, but also ensures that our staff is not inundated with work, as this could potentially greatly extend our resources beyond what we are able to afford to provide. If you do end up getting the work done before the 14 day cooldown is up, then you would ostensibly have a lot of 50% rule (play) debt. As stressed here in Lesson 0. And if you have somehow managed to balance out all of the time you've spent on studies with play and are still getting it done in under 14 days (which is honestly not really doable), then your best bet would be to spend the time you have left whilst waiting to submit, and waiting to get your feedback, on additional play.