On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I normally would have gone to three classes: Retelling the Tale, Applied Probability and Statistics, and Computer Organization. The day ended up far different from what I had planned. What follows is an edited email that I sent to a friend that day:

I woke up a little before my alarm clock sounded at 9:30 a.m. I took a shower quickly for I had work to do for my first class. When I returned to my room I immediately received a phone call. 9:56 a.m. My dad told me what had happened. I relayed the information to my roommate Andrew. We were both startled, but the magnitude of the horror didn't become clear until I went to Phil's room and watched the news for an hour. The footage of the World Trade Center collapsing was just incredible. And seeing those live shots of Manhattan enveloped in smoke––pretty amazing; pretty terrible.

Then there were all the rumors. Car bomb outside the State Department! White House on fire! Fortunately, all rumors. I went to get food. Everyone was quiet. Everyone knew that something was wrong.

My RA Paul and I decided to go to DC. I skipped my classes––something more important was going down. We got off at the Archives metro stop and walked around, down to the Mall. We could see smoke. We walked down C Street and saw more smoke.

We crossed the river and walked around the south side of the Pentagon to get to Pentagon City. There were police everywhere and it was difficult to get to the side where the carnage actually occurred. Every shop was closed. Every restaurant was closed. There were a lot of military types and civilians walking around. We were walking up a hill when a college student, Teri, ran up to us and took us to her apartment where we went to the roof to see the smoldering Pentagon. Later a lady told us that we could see really well if we went up this one ramp. We did it, but after taking a single picture a police officer yelled at us and ordered us off the road.

We went to the Pentagon City metro station and, because the yellow line wasn't in service going north, took the blue line to Metro Center and walked around DC. Just about everything was closed. Every business. Every store. Every restaurant. Police had most of the roads blocked off. There was no one milling around. The only sounds were police sirens. We had to walk blocks before we finally found one restaurant that was open, but they didn't serve us because they were so busy with people watching the news and calling relatives. We walked a couple more blocks and finally stopped in this place that was closing as we arrived, but allowed us to order some food. The city really was coming to a close.

As the subway emerged from its underground tunnel on our way home, we could still see smoke coming from the Pentagon. We had gotten there at noon, and now leaving after three, more than five hours after the attack, there was still chaos. At the College Park metro station there were special Late Edition Washington Post newspapers. When was the last time that there was a Late Edition?

There are some things that I'll remember about my trip downtown. The quiet in the city pierced only by police sirens. The concern of people, talking to one another trying to figure out what had happened. The smell of the smoke. I smelled my arms as we left the area and they smelled of nasty tire-burning smoke. I'll remember how the smoke clouds made the Washington Monument look dark gray. And I'll remember coming back to college and seeing everyone huddled around television sets, trying to figure out what to do and where to go from here.

That night with three friends I snuck into Byrd Stadium and we climbed to the top of the football stadium's stands. We could see in the far distance lights near the Pentagon and some smoke still coming from the building. The weather was lovely, as it had been all day, and as the cool and quiet of the night surrounded us we talked about what had transpired. While we all acknowledged the importance of the day's events, there was no way for us to know just how September 11 would change the United States and the world.

The next day classes were canceled. Dan Mote, the president of the University of Maryland, wrote:

"Never in the course of my life have I had to endure a national crisis of this proportion. The loss of innocent life and the national terror induced by our defenselessness have taken on a surreal quality that is far beyond my experience. Though this terrorist attack is a declaration of war against our country, by whom is it and to what end? I expect that before too long we will be able to answer these questions, and that our nation will respond assertively.

"In the meantime I encourage all of us to mourn and pray for those innocents who have been sacrificed by this butchery. We need to set aside moments for contemplation and grieving; they will be good for our souls and may help, just a little, those among us who have lost friends and family members. They will allow us to band together to support our entire campus family. This is a time for coming together.

"Accordingly, I have declared that Wednesday, September 12 shall be a day of mourning and reflection for the campus. The campus will remain open, but all classes will be canceled to allow all of us to come together on the McKeldin Mall to be with each other throughout the day."

For the University community, the terrorist attacks were another September tragedy. A fraternity member had died the week prior, and two weeks later a tornado would rip through campus, killing two sisters and causing great damage. For a while on September 11 it was impossible to use a telephone, as the network was overloaded with people calling friends and family. Many members of the campus lost family members in the terrorist attacks, and more than 8,000 people attended the gathering on McKeldin Mall.

Paul, who had gone to the Pentagon with me, wrote an op-ed about his experience that was published in the campus paper. Coincidentally yet appropriately, that tragic semester I was taking a course called Shaping our Losses: Creativity and the Experience of Grief. The class was a nice outlet for the varied emotions that I felt after the attacks.

Looking back now, on the third anniversary of the attacks, it is hard to remember exactly how I felt on September 10 before the attacks, on September 11 during the attacks, or on September 12 after the attacks. The rest of 2001 brought other troubling incidents, particularly the anthrax mail attacks. At work I was told to use gloves when delivering mail to campus residents. Later came the war in Afghanistan, the color-coded terror alert system, and the war in Iraq.

It is frequently noted how much has changed in the last three years. The world grieved with the United States after the attacks, but now many groups regard my country in great scorn. The recent horror at a Russian school in Beslan reinforced the notion that terrorism evolves and thrives off the targeting of innocents. It is easy and necessary to condemn terrorism, but the whole world still has yet to adopt a policy of self-examination. In no way should a country yield to terrorist demands, but it is important to examine the roots of terrorism and to question whether or not any policies are exacerbating the hopeless and sometimes crazed emotions of those who turn to terrorism as a political weapon.

I hope that this currently divided America can sometime feel the unity that comforted the country on September 12, and I hope that it does not take another attack for Americans to reach a point where perceived or actual differences matter less than coming together to make a change for the best.