The night before a major exam, a student feels intensely anxious, with a racing heart and churning stomach, but the feeling resolves entirely once the exam is over and does not recur afterward. Before revealing the answer: is this morbid anxiety?

No, this is more consistent with ordinary anxiety as an abnormal emotional reaction than with morbid anxiety. Morbid anxiety is a sustained state, present most of the time and largely independent of external circumstances; here, the anxiety is tied clearly to a specific, identifiable trigger and resolves completely once that trigger has passed, which is the pattern of a proportionate, if intense, reactive response rather than an illness in its own right.