Every spring at Lehigh, the same thing happens: the leaves change, the weather shifts and students start to panic about exams.
You can feel it in the library and see it in the long lines at Saxbys. You can hear it in the way people talk faster because of a lack of sleep.
Exams are supposed to measure what we learn. Instead, they often measure how much stress our bodies can handle, creating more harm than good.
The pressure to perform well doesn’t just affect grades. It affects students’ health, sleep schedules and even their personal relationships. Many students act like copious amounts of stress are normal, but they shouldn’t be.
When exam season begins, students tend to stop taking care of themselves. People skip meals and eat whatever is fast and cheap. Some students drink too much caffeine just to make it through the day. Others pull all-nighters and tell themselves they’ll sleep after finals are over.
Mental health suffers during exam season.
Students who already deal with anxiety or depression often feel their symptoms worsen. The pressure can make people feel hopeless or overwhelmed. Some students isolate themselves because they feel like they have no time for friends, while others feel guilty taking study breaks, even though breaks are necessary for the brain to function.
The body doesn’t work on unhealthy schedules like that. One can’t ignore sleep and expect to feel fine, or overload one’s brain and expect it to perform at its best.
I’ve seen students get sick during finals week from not adequately nourishing their bodies. Some catch colds because their immune systems are weakened by stress. Others feel chest tightness or dizziness because their anxiety is so high. Headaches become common, and stomach problems may show up out of nowhere.
Stress isn’t just in one’s head. It lives in the body.
At elite higher education institutions like Lehigh, on top of ordinary academic stress, there’s also a culture of competition. Students compare everything from grades to internships to how many hours they studied. Instead of supporting each other, it can feel like everyone’s racing.
That kind of environment makes exams even worse.
Another issue is that exams reward short-term memorization instead of real understanding. Many students cram large sums of information into their brains at the last minute just to pass a test. A week later, most of that information is gone. If the goal of college is to truly learn, then this system doesn’t make sense. It trains students to survive stress instead of growing intellectually.
What makes this more frustrating is that professors often stack exams close together. A student might have three or four major tests in the same week, which means days of constant studying with little rest.
Students start to believe that one bad test could ruin their futures, and that belief is heavy. It sits on their shoulders every time they open their laptops.
The schedule alone creates a crisis: it’s less of a test of knowledge and more a test of endurance.
Exams shouldn’t disappear completely. Tests can be useful to show whether students understand the material, but the current system feels extreme. There are other ways to measure learning, like projects, presentations and smaller assessments spread throughout the semester that reduce the pressure of a single exam dictating an entire class grade.
College should challenge students. It should push students to think critically and grow, but not at the expense of their physical and mental health. When students are constantly exhausted, anxious and physically unwell, something is wrong. Success shouldn’t require sacrificing sleep, peace of mind and basic well-being.
Lehigh prides itself on caring about its students. If that’s true, then exam culture needs to change. Stress shouldn’t be a badge of honor, and pulling all-nighters shouldn’t be something students brag about. Education should help students thrive, not break them down.
Exams at Lehigh have become more than academic assessments. They’ve become a source of widespread stress that harms students mentally and physically. If we want a healthier campus, we need to rethink how much pressure we place on students during exam season. Grades matter, but our health matters more.
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