Every spring at Lehigh, the same thing happens: the leaves change, the weather shifts and students start to panic about exams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exams are supposed to measure what we learn. Instead, they often measure how much stress our bodies can handle, creating more harm than good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pressure to perform well doesn\u2019t just affect grades. It affects students\u2019 health, sleep schedules and even their personal relationships. Many students act like copious amounts of stress are normal, but they shouldn\u2019t be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019ll sleep after finals are over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mental health suffers during exam season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The body doesn\u2019t work on unhealthy schedules like that. One can\u2019t ignore sleep and expect to feel fine, or overload one\u2019s brain and expect it to perform at its best.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stress isn\u2019t just in one\u2019s head. It lives in the body.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At elite higher education institutions like Lehigh, on top of ordinary academic stress, there\u2019s 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\u2019s racing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That kind of environment makes exams even worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019t make sense. It trains students to survive stress instead of growing intellectually.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The schedule alone creates a crisis: it\u2019s less of a test of knowledge and more a test of endurance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exams shouldn\u2019t disappear completely. Tests can be useful\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019t require sacrificing sleep, peace of mind and basic well-being.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lehigh prides itself on caring about its students. If that\u2019s true, then exam culture needs to change. Stress shouldn\u2019t be a badge of honor, and pulling all-nighters shouldn\u2019t be something students brag about. Education should help students thrive, not break them down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exams at Lehigh have become more than academic assessments. They\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every spring at Lehigh, the same thing happens: the leaves change, the weather shifts and students start to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,6077],"class_list":{"0":"post-161507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-4-min-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-column"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}