@pisum I have been meaning to start a thread for educators to share their experiences, and finally did so here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/educators-how-do-you-use-inaturalist-or-seek/2112 You’re right in that it would be better to know specifically why people want to start projects so quickly, but my experience tells me that a lot of messaging, which we can’t really control, involves the creation of projects.
That being said, I think the underlying goal here with the observation quota as it relates to projcts is to help people succeed with creating and running a project, and that is more difficult to do if you’re not familiar with the basics of iNaturalist (as @nanofishology said much more eloquently than I am doing here). It takes a little time to learn those basics, and even the best tutorial and messaging won’t be a substitute for real experience, from my perspective.