Letter from the People Who Run Offside

It is just two weeks before we jet off to the old world, and we are sitting in a coffee shop where it all began: Mosaic District. Four years ago, we met here for the first time before moving into our first dorm room at Connecticut College. Zoe was sitting on a bench, and Catja walked right past her before realizing that she almost missed meeting the best friend she’d have at Conn (writing in 3rd person is so weird but Zoe and Catja are currently sitting across from each other at a table). After enjoying breakfast together, Zoe went home and shed a few tears over her new ballerina roommates, little did she know that four years later she would be moving halfway across the world with this very same ballerina. Catja was so anxious and sweaty after meeting her fellow Virginian who somehow wore jeans in the sweltering July weather that she forgot her to-go box of hashbrowns in Ted’s Bulletin.

Today, as we reminisce on these stories, we prepare for a new adventure ahead and many more memories to come. Although our travels begin on September 1st, we wanted to provide a glimpse into our hectic lives preparing for this change. Zoe randomly sent Catja a blog post draft one night detailing our long and stressful flat hunt with two British women we met on the internet! It is heartfelt and honest and surely sets the tone for what’s to come. We put back on our editorial and layout caps and got to work bringing our website to life. After many Canva experiments and inspiration from graphic design TikTok, we (mostly Zoe) got Offside up and running.

Catja’s former EIC neuroticism kicked in as she reminded them both to add photos to the folder and please please please add a title to the documents so layout goes smoothly. This brings us here today, where we sit in a cafe ready to publish our first posts in a significantly less stressful layout Friday.

Offside is now online! Please enjoy the start of our many stories to tell in our upcoming year.

Here’s to hoping that the Spurs stay onside this weekend!

Catja and Zoe