[OMFG!You'reActuallySmart!]

Most of my current courses have 2-3 term tests, at least 1 long research paper and exam. One of them has 7 labs and another has weekly quizzes before each lecture to test whether we understood the assigned readings, as well as a research paper and a 1-2 hour long presentation.

It sucks when the course grading is based on only a few tests because if you cock one of the tests up, it's very hard to improve your mark. Usually I don't prefer those courses, although it depends on the professor. My second-year cell biology course had 3 tests, labs and an exam. The tests were ridiculously long and the exam had around 230-250 multiple-choice questions, so if you couldn't figure out the answer in a few seconds, you had to skip it. The tests only had around 120-140 questions, so not as long but still brutal as hell.

I can sympathize with having to write slower. My writing is usually pretty messy and I've damaged my writing wrist so many times to the point where I have to wear a metal-plated brace, otherwise it hurts like hell and I lose strength so my writing becomes illegible. The brace helps but even for a long test, eventually the wrist starts giving out, usually toward the end only.

Eventually you become used to such high demands but that doesn't mean it isn't fun studying for such a huge test.

Try to get past tests if you can from a student club in that particular field. At my university, many but not all courses have this, where students who finished the course drop off their tests for money or in exchange for a free test for a different course.