Seventeen years ago I was in Fairfield, CT when the planes hit
It was my first semester teaching English composition, and I was taking it very seriously. At the time the planes flew into the twin towers, I was in the basement of the library holding office hours. There were no TVs, no radio. All I had to go on were the conversations I overheard as people passed by my cubicle. After an hour or so, I left the basement to find out more. It was then I made the bold move to approach the chair of the department and tell her I thought it would be a good idea to cancel my classes for the day. Amazingly, she agreed. As I was driving home, I turned on the radio for updates. Of course it was too early to tell who had been behind the attacks. While I listened to the reporters say over and over, "We do not know who the terrorists are affiliated with", I kept mouthing the words, "It's Bin Laden".
The next few weeks were hell at the college. You see, Fairfield, CT is about 50 miles away from NYC. This hit extremely close to home! Some of my students had relatives or friends who lived in NYC; some of them had relatives or friends who worked in the towers. One of the classes I taught was a freshman seminar, and it was particularly tough. What do you say to a college freshman when something like that happens? How do you deal with the weight of responsibility for soothing the hurt and allaying the fears of 20 kids, basically strangers, who are not much younger than you? Seventeen years later I can be honest about my performance: I SUCKED! But you know what, I think most of the professors, even the long time ones, also sucked. There is nothing, nothing at all, that can prepare someone for an event such as 9/11.
To this day, I look back on the experience and understand how much I grew in the aftermath of our nation's tragedy. When I accepted my teaching position, I was a naive young man fresh out of graduate school, where the most pressing business was writing a critical analysis of some piece of literature that hardly anyone had heard of. After the attack, I had to shake off the myopia that comes from being wholly and selfishly invested in graduate school. I came down out of that ivory tower and joined the rest of the world. I think maybe a lot of people around the country had a similar experience, realizing that we are part of a global community. The nationalistic tendencies we've seen growing over the past few years are the equivalent not only of burying our heads in the sand, but also ignoring one of the most valuable lessons we should have learned from 9/11. Like it or not, the United States is part of a much larger community of nations. Our actions, our policies have far reaching effects. I was jarred into understanding how my students were not just happy faces I was to instruct; they were real people who had family and friends directly involved in the attack. Just as I had to assume the responsibility of being more than an "educator", so too must our nation realize its global responsibilities.
= new reply since forum marked as read
