At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college in Myrtle Beach, SC. For me, Tuesday, September 11, was just an ordinary day. It was my light day of classes, so I was looking forward to sleeping in a little bit. I only had one class at 11 AM. I woke up around 9:30 AM. It has always been my routine for the past several years to wake up and turn the TV to CNN to see the headlines for the day. Well, when I did, I saw the horrible image of the towers on fire. I didn’t even take time to read the caption at the bottom of the screen, so I continued flipping through channels to find something else to watch, thinking it was just a simple fire in the building. It did not take long to figure out that something was very very wrong. After turning to ESPN, ABC, NBC, MTV, TLC, and noticing how every image was the same, I went into the bedroom and woke up my boyfriend of 4 years and said, ” Hunny something is really wrong. Come out and see this.” We both sat on the couch for the next hour, never saying a word to each other. We watched both of the tours fall, and we both cried. When it came time for me to head to my class, he really did not want me to go because there was news that a 4th plane had been hijacked and we didn’t know where it was at the time. However, I did go to class and it was impossible to forget what I just saw. The radio stations were all broadcasting the same thing. When I got to campus, people were crying, professors and students were sitting around in offices and lobbies watching the television. Girls were in the restrooms crying, scared not knowing what is going to happen next. Everyone just felt a sense of shock, disbelief, and helplessness. Surprisingly our class was normal. The professor conducted it as though nothing was happening. I was kind of mad at the time because there were millions of people suffering while we were sitting there in class doing nothing about it, but I was somewhat thankful that there was some sense of normalcy that day.

As the one year anniversary approaches, let us not forget the lives that were lost and the lives that were changed.
God Bless America.