If students do not perceive an assessment task as suitable for assessing them, do they fully engage with the task? If not, does the task allow them to fully demonstrate their attainment? This thesis began life as a quest to investigate students’ perceptions of assessment. The original aim was to use the results of this investigation to improve the assessment regime in use on a particular mathematics subject knowledge enhancement course (MEC) attended by the participants of this study. As time passed, my circumstances changed. It was no longer possible to pursue the original aim. Also, I moved towards an enactivist stance where knowing is doing. As a result the nature of this thesis changed. Instead of being purely focussed on students’ perceptions it is now a narrative of my research journey retaining the theme of students’ perception at its core. This narrative lays bare the nature of undertaking PhD research. Analysis of students’ reflective logs and semi-structured interviews led to questions being raised about the nature of the link between students’ motivational orientation and their sense of fairness of assessment tasks. In addition, turning the idea of investigating how to make tutor feedback to students more effective on its head, by applying feedback analysis methods to students’ reflective, logs shows promise as a method to gain deeper understanding of students’ engagement with learning and assessment.