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I'll drink the Schnapps and give the rest to Oxfam



just a girl in her early twenties, documenting the transition from small-town Texas life to graduate studies in London.

Kelsey ⚡ I was born in the late '80s around Bremen, Germany. I currently live outside of Austin, Texas and work as a clerk for the IRS. I'm moving to London in September to begin a PhD program in European Political Economy. I'm a nice girl with a bad attitude... but I'm trying to smile more.

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ich ♥ liebe; foreign films, obscure Scandinavian rock bands, the smell of books and D&G's Light Blue. As for fashion, I adore Freja Beha Erichsen, geek chic and men who wear glasses, and wear baggy sweaters with shorts and boots. I'm really into architectural photography, modernist literature, urban design and Soviet history. This autumn, I'm starting my graduate studies on the economic and political reform of the European Union at the London School of Economics. I work as a clerk at the IRS, which involves a lot of paperwork and coffee from gas stations. I watch Skins, Criminal Minds, Bones, the BBC, stock reports and National Geographic. I enjoy swimming laps, learning German, going for roadtrips and listening to loud music. I couldn't survive without my friends or my brother. I hope to earn my doctorate, fall in love one day, earn an obscene amount of money, travel the world and I dunno, make it a better place in the process.

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LondonListens
I'll drink the Schnapps and give the rest to Oxfam



just a girl in her early twenties, documenting the transition from small-town Texas life to graduate studies in London.

so it's a bit past midnight now, and i have to be awake in just a few hours to make it to Austin by 6:15am. i've been tossing and turning in my bed, trying to fall asleep against the alternating sounds of my cat purring snoring and the cars rushing by on this very busy street we live on.

and then it hits me: tomorrow is my first day at the IRS, while spring break starts for everyone else. in a very short while i'm going to be at work, wearing an ID badge and organizing files at My Real Office Job, to save up for My Future & Tuition & Airplane Tickets & All Of That. i'm turning twenty-three in four months, i'm beginning graduate school, and i'm moving to a new country entirely alone. i opened up another bank account on Friday, i filed my taxes, i changed the oil in my car. i pay for gas and shampoo and cigarettes, have a nose piercing and color my hair and do all of these autonomous things...




this is the same house i lived in some twenty years ago. we've moved dozens of times since, but my family kept this house and rented it out for supplemental income. when my father assumed command here at Ft Hood last summer - as a Colonel in charge of an entire battalion - we moved back into this same place he bought brand new as a young Captain in the spring of '91. he left for the first Gulf War soon after. so much has changed and everything feels different, but i'm in the same bedroom tonight...

it's a lot to get my head around, i suppose. and i felt a bit silly lying in bed, squeezing a heart-shaped pillow and thinking about my best friend. i'm not a little girl anymore. i can say No or Yes whenever i'd like, or nothing at all. i'll be in London in six months, and this time next year i'll be working on my dissertation. sometimes out here in the desert it feels like time is a nonentity: the colors don't change at all and the only thing that passes are the cars. but when i start to put the pieces together, it all moves too quickly. i'm just a kid, you know? i'm not an adult. i'm off the rails more often than not. i always manage to burn whatever i try to bake and never know what wines go with what meals. i don't know how to find a flat or apply for a visa. i don't know what specialization to study in my masters program or how to fall in love or choose a mobile carrier overseas. i don't know how to do any of this "stuff" that ought to be reserved for grownups. it's overwhelming and strange. i know i'll get through it, of course i will. the only direction is forward, yeah? but there comes this moment, and perhaps i've had mine tonight, when you realize that something you once took for granted is lost, and lost for good.

I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can. → C. S. Lewis

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1° well then, I suppose it's official. ★ March 2011 ★ Coded by wickedicy banner from Tumblr.