At Swedish upper secondary school, all students have to pass a mandatory course with thename “Gymnasiearbete”. This course is different from all other courses due to severalreasons, for example, being a project work related only to the programme orientation andwithout an explicit course curriculum. In this project, we have followed students from theNatural Science Programme taking this course, and studied their interest, engagement andepistemic beliefs. Through observations, interviews, and questionnaires, we have foundtriggers important to emphasise to make students more engaged and interested to enhancetheir knowledge. We will, from both a teacher and researcher perspective, discuss this courserelated to both affective and cognitive variables.