The new Wellbeing Lab provides fitness classes as well as a comfortable place to rest and recharge.
PHOTO: COURTESY WELLBEING LAB
As a first-generation American from Miami, he missed his family. He worried about the workload. He even felt overwhelmed on the basketball team, a sport that typically helped him to blow off steam. As fall faded to winter, he started drinking heavily to cope.
“MIT was a long way from home. The culture and the lifestyle are very different. The intensity of the environment wasn’t easy. I missed my family. I felt very depressed. I worried that I wasn’t performing well. I was always anxious,” he recalls.
One night, Delgado-Gonzalez became overly intoxicated and ended up in the hospital. Things had to change. “I wasn’t talking about [my feelings] with anybody. I’d never been to a therapist before,” he says.
Assistant Dean of Student Wellbeing Robyn Priest met with him to come up with a plan for healthier living. In a meeting, she suggested that he apply to be an assistant at MIT’s new Wellbeing Lab. The role recentered him. Today, Delgado-Gonzalez greets fellow students who visit the lab. He introduces them to the space and to programming like workshops on sleep, nutrition, and self-care.
The Wellbeing Lab is the physical manifestation of DoingWell, an Institute initiative focused on four pillars: mind, body, relationships, and purpose. The lab debuted in October 2023 on the third floor of the newly renovated Stratton Student Center. Sunny and bright, it offers a quiet place to recharge mind and body with coloring books, knitting, and (since this is MIT) LEGO. It hosts community workshops and movie nights to foster strong relationships. Finally, it houses private areas for meetings with offices like Student Mental Health and Counseling and GradSupport for students to crystallize a sense of identity and purpose.
Services, proactive education, faculty involvement
The Wellbeing Lab, says Suzy Nelson, vice chancellor and dean for student life, “is the culmination of more than a decade of work to integrate and centralize well-being on campus.”
In 2020, the Division of Student Life launched the Office of Student Wellbeing to support the effort. Part one involved ensuring the MIT community knew where to turn for help when needed, which was particularly critical during the Covid-19 pandemic. Part two was proactive education: reaching out to students, beginning at orientation, about how to prioritize self-care in a stressful environment. Third, the office worked with faculty on how to interact with students in crisis and how to foster learning communities that promote camaraderie and connection.
“We wanted faculty not just to refer students when they were concerned about their health, but also think about how to infuse principles of well-being into classes while still maintaining the academic rigor that MIT is famous for,” says David Randall, the senior associate dean for student life.
Photo: Courtesy Wellbeing Lab
Data culled from MIT’s Institutional Research team and from Student Quality of Life surveys cemented the urgency. They found reliable predictors of undergraduate and graduate student well-being: confidence in their ability to navigate MIT socially, having friends and a sense that they belonged, and feeling prepared for life after graduation.
The Wellbeing Lab, made possible through the financial support of MIT alumni and friends, is a place where students can see those efforts in action. World-class research labs and makerspaces have long signified MIT’s commitment to knowledge building and hands-on learning. Providing a lab dedicated to well-being signals the same prioritization of student health and connection. Here, it’s OK to curl up on a comfy couch for a nap, quietly sip tea, or just read a book.
The importance of boundaries
Of course, relaxation can be a tough sell for highly motivated students.
As a first-year student, “there was always something to do that was more pressing than rest or recovery,” says Annabelle Liefke ’26, a computer science major who works at and uses the Wellbeing Lab. As a sophomore lab assistant, she began to set boundaries.
“I don’t do homework while I’m eating. I refuse, whether it’s a snack or a meal. That’s a sacred time. When I’m on my well-being shift, I make a cup of tea and check in with people at home. If I find the motivation to get some work done, maybe I’ll open my laptop, because sometimes working on something is rewarding. I try to maximize those times,” she says.
Yes, students do study at the lab, but it’s a choice, not a focus. Student lab assistants help normalize resting and recharging, students say. Having a dedicated space to connect helps to legitimize that goal.
“MIT is a really busy school. There’s honestly no getting around that. But by establishing a space that allows students to take a step back and have two- or three-minute conversations with friends in an amiable environment, it’s an invaluable addition to MIT’s campus,” says lab assistant Surya Sakhamuri ’26, a materials science and engineering major. “It not only serves as a reminder but also as an opportunity to take some time for yourself. Everyone can afford to do it. It’s just about how much of a priority it is for students.”
For Delgado-Gonzalez, it took a medical crisis to prioritize mental health. Today, he’s glad he did. He’s thriving as a business analytics and data science major. He competes on MIT’s Men’s Basketball Team and is part of the Sigma Chi fraternity and the MIT Sloan Investment Management Club. As a Wellbeing Lab assistant, Delgado-Gonzalez wants his peers to know that they aren’t alone, or any less worthy, if they feel overwhelmed.
“This is obviously one of the most challenging institutions not only in the United States but in the world. There are a lot of expectations on you, and the curriculum is very tough. It’s like an identity crisis: you’ve been a top student your whole life, and then you come to the school and it humbles you. It’s a very hard thing to overcome at times,” he says.
Of course, what makes MIT stressful also makes it special. The Division of Student Life hopes that students see the Wellbeing Lab and the overall DoingWell initiative as tools to sharpen focus in other areas of campus life.
“We know that students come to MIT because of the high academic rigor. The academic experience is what MIT is known for. What we’re trying to do is to have students prioritize their well-being so that they can be the best students, researchers, and learners possible,” Randall says.