Andrea Kszystyniak is an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri – Columbia, pursuing a double major in journalism and political science. She is a 2008 graduate of Cumberland High School in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Kszystyniak is enamored with beat literature and the counterculture. Inspired by literary idols like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe as well as pop culture commentator, Chuck Klosterman, she hopes to work as a columnist or musical journalist. Kszystyniak is enamored with the unpredictability of journalism. She hopes that journalism will enable her to gain an understanding of the intricacies of social life and see the world in the process. Kszystyniak enjoys attending myriad concerts, creative writing, people watching, leadership, learning about learning, Radiohead, and singing loudly to 90’s pop.

MU has allowed Kszystyniak to flex her writing muscles as a staff writer (and, hopefully, soon to be Arts and Entertainment editor) for The Maneater and MOVE magazine. She has also worked as in public relations, serving the Cumberland RI’s Office of Children, Youth and Learning and served as a columnist for The Valley Breeze, a paper published in her hometown. She is also a writer for IndieRockReviews.com and was a semifinalist in the Student Leadership Training Program’s Student Leader of the Year competition.

Kszystyniak is extraordinarily interested in brain science and learning about human social interaction which pushed her to pursue a leadership training certification from the Student Leadership Training Program. Kszystyniak was also chosen as the female delegate to represent Rhode Island in the Al Neuharth Free Spirit Scholarship Program.

Most of Kszystyniak’s collegiate journalistic endeavors for The Maneater can be seen here.

Kszystyniak also maintains a blog, featured on the Free Spirit Network, which can be read here.

Please be sure to visit IndieRockReviews.com

Want to reach her? Send an email here.

"Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles--a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other--that kept me going."

- Hunter S Thompson

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