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TX State | Life > Experiences

The Chaos Of August: How I Keep From Crashing Out

Vika Tatsch Student Contributor, Texas State University
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at TX State chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

OK, I’ll be honest with you, I do crash out a bit. But just hear me out: it’s August. 

I went from a relaxing pool, an outdoor concert, and a trip abroad to a classroom with a long lecture, all in the span of one month. The shift in responsibility and tone is quite a lot to take in. 

One minute I’m lounging in the sun with my shades on and a magazine in my hand. The next, I’m pacing to class with 20 pounds on my shoulders and sweat in my hair. What’s going on? 

There’s something in the air this Fall semester that has grown my schedule from its measly size into a monster. A big, busy monster that wants to eat at any free time I have. 

After a glamorous summer, I’m suddenly swept back up into an overwhelming reality. With college courses, extracurriculars, and a job working 28 hours a week, why wouldn’t I crash out? 

Well, I think I need to take a deep breath and stabilize myself before the stress gets to me.

The School Stress That’s Choking Me Out

Summer is a blessing from heaven. It tends to my wounds, mellows my anxiety, and gives me a pretty cute tan. 

I spent it traveling, visiting with people I love, and, in all honesty, healing from the previous school year. A refreshing May, a hot June, a festive July (it was my birthday), then August. 

August seems to be the turning point. Although it’s in the middle of the yearly calendar, it starts a new year: a school year. And so follows a change of pace and new commitments. 

In the Fall semester, I signed up for an average schedule with five courses and 15 hours total. It’s not anything crazy, and supposedly, exactly what I handled the year before. So I wasn’t really expecting any type of sudden stress that I hadn’t already experienced. 

But what I didn’t realize going into this school year was the thick amount of reading I was going to have. 

As an English major, of course I’m going to need to be reading. Of course! That’s what an English major does anyway. Read, read, write some, read more. 

So why was I expecting anything else? To be honest, I didn’t think it through completely then. 

So, of course! Of course, I’m going to have 40 pages of reading due per class, one film watched per week, and a couple of writing assignments sprinkled in for fun. Of course!

Can you tell I’m stressed?

So as I headed into the first full week of school, I held my head up high. I didn’t fully process how much time that would all take, nor recognize I didn’t actually have enough time at all. 

Very quickly into that first week, starting Aug. 24, I realized I was already behind. The readings overlapped with one another, the two-hour films felt like an inconvenience, and none of it got finished. Even though we had just started school, isn’t that great?

Is Work My 13th Reason?

But wait! There’s more!

College students don’t just go to school, though. They live and sustain themselves, most of the time. 

For me, I have rent to pay. Meaning, on top of school, I work a minimum of four shifts a week. In food service, nonetheless.

So as I’m checking my planner and catching up to finish my homework, my time is cut short by work. Work, work, work. Make the money, pay the bills. 

All of these obligations weren’t in effect, or even known to me, at the start of August. Within a single month, just a few weeks, a busy monster decided to come down and fall on my chest. 

I was stressed, overwhelmed, and on the border of social exhaustion. Yet we’re still somehow in the month of August. But I can’t keep going on like this. If I can’t get my stress under control, I might not make it to September at all. 

Understandably, the beginning of the school year is loaded with stress, but no one prepared students for the drastic switch in mentality. It’s not just going from summer to the Fall semester; it’s reprioritizing how schedules are managed and reevaluating the strength of their resilience. 

After that blow of reality hit me, I took a long night’s rest and a deep breath to figure out how I was going to make it all coexist. There must be a way because dropping out wasn’t an option (although the idea did come up during a breakdown).

I realize now that I need to use my weekends efficiently to stay two steps ahead of my reading, simply to make room for my evening work schedule. And I need to keep my Fridays empty to sustain at least a sliver of free time and peace of mind, which I commonly do through shopping and resituating the fridge.

It was an overwhelming solution to come up with, but a solution nonetheless. 

The deeper I progress into the year, I need to remind myself that this constant cycle of stress isn’t forever (although it feels endless). There’s always a remedy, whether it’s to learn a new schedule, spend some hours of leisure, or simply take a good nap to calm the nerves. 

I just need to remind myself that soon, August will end.

Vika Tatsch

TX State '29

Viktoria (Vika) Tatsch is a writer for Her Campus at Texas State University, where she brainstorms ideas, collabs with other writers, drafts, and revises pieces. She is especially passionate about writing life content dealing with people, relationships, emotions, and personal development. In her role in this chapter, Vika loves to support her companions, read others works, and share with the community around her.

Beyond Her Campus, Vika is an English major at Texas State University with a minor in the Studies of Popular Culture. Here, she explores various concepts of literature, writing, and film, where she is deep diving into the critical approaches of history, luminary novelists and poets, and the building blocks of influential texts. With these inspirations, she is also a column writer for Trill Magazine Inc., an online Gen Z magazine. By joining Her Campus in the Fall semester of 2026, Vika is excited to continue developing her ambition in journalist and creative writing, as well as hoping to improve in her own skills of editing and leadership.

Outside of academics and work, Vika loves to read and write in her own time. Especially while in a coffee shop with a sweater on. She loves to keep a busy schedule with dance classes, practicing sewing, and hanging out with her friends and family. Whether shopping through the day or spending a night in, she is always open to learning new things and can’t wait for the future to come.