Thesis Weekends offer peer support and an optimal setting to work on your thesis

What is the Thesis Weekend?

The Thesis Weekend (Finnish: Opinnäyterupeama) is an interdisciplinary weekend event designed to help you make progress on your thesis. The weekend’s structure and schedule have been planned to provide the ideal setting for working on your thesis. All you need to do is show up and focus on your work.

During the Thesis Weekend:

• you will work on your thesis
• you will get a peaceful space to concentrate
• you will meet other students in the same situation
• you will get support from peer mentors and other participants
• peer mentors take care of time management

The thesis weekend begins on Friday afternoon. Participants will go home to rest in between, and work will continue on Saturday and Sunday from early morning. The university provides breakfast for participants on Saturday and Sunday. Coffee and tea will also be available throughout the weekend.

The workshop is led by peer mentor trained by the university, who are students themselves. The university pays the peer mentors a financial compensation.

Who is the thesis weekend suitable for?

All students of the University of Jyväskylä who are working on a bachelor’s thesis, master’s thesis, diploma thesis or doctoral dissertation are welcome to join the thesis weekends. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve only just started your thesis or whether it’s been on hold for a while and you finally want to get it done. One of the benefits of the thesis weekends is that students at different stages of their studies bring different perspectives and offer peer support to one another. A student working on a bachelor’s thesis can receive encouragement from those at the master’s thesis stage. And those further along in their studies can gain a new perspective on their own topic when explaining it to students who are not yet familiar with the subject in depth.

How to join?

Thesis weekends are typically held twice a month during the academic year. Every other session takes place at the university’s main library and every other at the Kortepohja student village. Thesis workshops are also held in the summer, once a month in Kortepohja.

There is a separate pre-registration for each weekend. There is space for around 20 participants, on a first-come, first-served basis.

The dates of upcoming thesis workshops and registration links can be found on the Peer groups page of the For students section:

Thesis workshop schedules and registration

You can also find upcoming thesis workshops in the ‘Upcoming student events’ section of the website and in the MyJYU app.

For further information, please contact: opinnayterupeama(a)jyu.fi