My second year of college represented a time when the blurry road of becoming a responsible adult coalesced into something a bit more focused. I was majoring in Digital Media & Mass Communications, primarily to learn about visual effects in the television and film industry, with the goal towards landing a post-graduate job as a 3D Modeler or VFX Compositor somewhere in California. While that career didn't pan out – another story for another time – I was quite eager to move past the core curriculum of my Freshman year and finally enroll in a digital media design class using enterprise-grade software for content creation. It was the fall of 2001, and I was excited about the future.

Looking back in a decades timeframe, it's interesting what you remember and what you don't from a specific point in life. I don't remember the exact name of the class, but I know it was focused on design principles using vector graphics. I remember the class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 am – an unwise time for any college student's social schedule – but I don't remember the name of my teacher. I don't recall the exact digital project we were working on, but I remember my frustration with the fact that we were using Macromedia Freehand even when all signs were pointing towards Adobe Illustrator's dominance in the vector design space. Finally, I don't remember any of my classmates, but I do remember the exact facial features of one particular student when he busted through the door nearly an hour late to class with a look of shock on his face. He was silent for a brief moment, composing himself before cutting off the teacher mid-sentence to shout what he'd just heard on September 11th, 2001.

"A PLANE JUST HIT ONE OF THE TWIN TOWERS IN NEW YORK!"

Half asleep just seconds before, a surge of adrenaline shot through me like an ice pick. Did I just hear him correctly? How could that even happen? Was this a prank?!?

Still processing the news, the entire classroom immediately opened our desktop internet browsers and tried accessing a variety of news websites to verify the announcement. Our teacher, just as flustered as we were, made a futile attempt to keep us focused and asked that we keep working through the lesson, but nobody paid attention as she resumed her lecture. I tried every site I could think of – cnn.com, nbc.com, abc.com, etc. – and was met with 404 and 500 HTTP errors after every attempted refresh. This was years before any semblance of elastic web hosting was available, so even a small surge in traffic could quickly shut down the website of a large corporation. In a world where Facebook and Twitter didn't yet exist and cell phones were relegated to only voice calls and text messages, the entire world tried accessing the internet all at once, and nothing was working.

Finally, after 15 minutes of pressing F5 on my keyboard, one of my browser windows finally rendered and confirmed the North Tower collision, triggering another surge of adrenaline through my system. By now the teacher's lecture had drowned out to a low-frequency rumbling of background noise, similar to the bass frequency of a next door party resonating through an adjacent wall. Laser-focused, I clicked on one of the related URLs and was met with another 404 error – DAMN IT! Frustrated, I peered over my station and scanned across the room: as other students were able to land successful refreshes, we each began to squint and read whatever headlines were available from a nearby monitor.

Around 9:05 am, the steady fear turned into a nightmare as someone shouted, "THE SOUTH TOWER WAS JUST HIT!". Our focus to traverse the web-based news turned to a wave of panic across the room as we realized this was a planned attack, not an accident. Several students immediately packed their bags and started leaving the classroom in a frantic pace. By this point, our teacher couldn't maintain her composure and immediately cancelled the rest of class. Some students remained fixated to their computers in a hope to land another site refresh; others including myself left the room as soon as we could.

The rest of the day was a blur of anguish. I walked straight to my dorm and turned on my 13-inch TV/VCR combo unit, finding the first news channel possible and remaining fixated on the small screen for the next several hours. By now the university had cancelled all classes for the day and encouraged everyone to remain safely in their rooms until more was known about what was unfolding. As each catastrophic update was provided – the Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon; the FAA grounding all flights in the US; the South Tower collapse; the Flight 93 crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; the North Tower collapse – my adrenaline turned to numbness. I called my parents and friends; I talked to my roommate; I consoled with neighbors down the hall; I sat in silence.

I don't remember any of the actual conversations, but I remember exactly how I felt – hopeless.

One of my favorite annual traditions with my wife Anne is a trip to New York City, usually in the fall or spring when the weather isn't too miserable in either direction. As a former resident of Manhattan, Anne fully embraces the NYC ethos, and is an excellent tour guide with an uncanny ability to surface from any subway exit and know exactly where we are on the five-borough map within two seconds. We spend hours exploring the neighborhoods by foot, walking the High Line, trying to catch at least one Broadway show, visiting the Ground Zero reflection pools, and relaxing in Central Park whenever the sun warrants our undivided attention. In a dense city of 8.5 million people always on the move, our vacations to NYC always instill a sense of rejuvenation to both of us.

After a three-year hiatus mostly due to Covid, we finally made our annual NYC pilgrimage last week, this time with our 2-year-old daughter Grace in tow. This trip was a buffet of first-time experiences for Grace: her first flight; her first attempt to wear a mask for more than 10 consecutive minutes; her first subway ride; and her first stay in a downtown hotel of a major city. She cruised through each milestone like we were playing in the minors and she had already went pro, and watching her process everything with a continuous look of excitement on her face was like reliving each experience myself for the first time.

While we didn't intentionally plan this year's trip to coincide with 9/11, the fact that it was the 20th anniversary of the attacks on our last full day in the city was a motivating factor to ensure an in-person visit at some point before midnight. With the site being closed to the general public until the evening, we stayed in upper Manhattan until sundown, spoiling Grace with a healthy dose of ice cream, Mexican food, and Central Park sun. After a quick refresh back in the hotel room, we skipped any notion of an early bedtime for her and hopped on the Express train around 9 pm towards Tribeca to meet one of Anne's longtime friends and then head as a group to the memorial.

When we emerged from the concrete underground in Lower Manhattan, my eyes immediately locked on the two massive beams of light a few blocks away vertically shooting into the chasm of space above us, and I was immediately taken back to sitting in front of that 13-inch TV my sophomore year. As we walked a couple of blocks to the reflection pools, the events ran through my head again: the classroom chaos; the sprint back to my dorm; the feeling of shock, then numbness, then hopelessness. But then, staring into these lights in the sky, a new surge of adrenaline triggered an emotion I didn't feel on 9/11/2001: I felt a sense of pride for the iconic symbol that both honored the lives we lost that day and celebrated the unbreakable spirit of New York. It was beautiful.

In the twenty years since 9/11, I've found myself confronting the current reality of a country that lives on a daily diet of social-media fueled rage towards one another on any topic imaginable, and then contrast that to the same group of citizens that just two decades prior showed unrelenting unity in the face of unimaginable catastrophe. It's not that we didn't have differences of opinion back then, it's that we respected differences of opinion and were willing to have a constructive conversation about it. That notion is long absent, and I'm not sure it will ever return, but that doesn't mean we should stop fighting for it. Being in NYC this past week exactly two decades later reminded me of that, and those lights remain a beacon of hope that maybe... just maybe... we can find that unity in a shroud of divisiveness.