‘Students want to get out of their heads and into their bodies’

“I am a Programme Officer for X at TU Delft and I’ve been working here for two years now. We have three clusters doing programming: Sports & Games, Arts & Crafts and Reflection & Lifestyle, which is the department I work in. X is the place at TU Delft where you can work on your personal development as a student, but we also offer our programmes to employees and external parties who are interested.

Almost anything goes when it comes to programmes. I do some static programmes that are almost always happening. For example, we have a campus farm where you can do some gardening, which was renovated and re-opened last year. It doubled in size and now we have 23 plots that people can rent and do their own gardening. We also offer a gardening course. I’m also responsible for Boost which is a room at X where you can get a physical or mental boost. We offer counselling services in cooperation with TU Delft Career & Counselling Services, a physical therapist to consult with, and we have a massage therapist where you can get a nice massage for a small fee. Besides that, I organise lots of dynamic events but that has been a challenge over the last two years with Covid. We have been trying to do a lot of events online or hybrid, which was actually one of our aims before Covid. Now we’re really happy to be able to do most of our programmes at X again in person.

We have offered a Health Week event for a couple of years now but this is my first year working on it. The event will take place from 21 to 27 February. We are organising it together with all three X clusters and we are trying to make it holistic. We have defined health by four aspects: physical, social, mental and spiritual health. We try to approach this week with a programme that balances all of these aspects.

‘We have tried to create a programme that has something for everyone’

This year the programme offers very broad activities. For example, there is a workshop on Monday that is about recharging your personal batteries. If you’re not able to come in person you can also watch the video online. We also have fitness tests, where you can do tests to find out how you’re doing physically. We have Walk & Talks which we started doing during lockdown because we realised students were really in need of social contact. We are offering extra workouts during the week, including spinning, a cardio killer workout, yoga and ballet fit classes. We know that a lot of students come to X because they want to get out of their heads and into their bodies and just relax by exercising.

We have a workshop on Tuesday about procrastination by Career & Counselling Services. We also have a cycling tour with GreenTU. They have created a really nice tour that is off campus and the route will include some stops to explore hidden places related to art and nature. We have a workshop that is available both online and in person where you can build your own terrarium. We also have a cuddling dog called Norah and you can book a 10 minute session, but she’s really popular so this is already full. We have tried to create a programme that has something for everyone.

We really want to see the students doing well and feeling well. We hope they have a good time at the events but we also want them to have some tools to know how to work on their health, and we mean health in the broadest sense of the word. We want to give them some tools to be able to work on their health afterwards as well.”

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer