September 11. This essay is about my personal experience that day, what America is to me, heroism, and patriotism. Includes quotes from 3 articles. Works cited included.

Essay by narissa516University, Bachelor'sA+, October 2004

download word file, 4 pages 2.5 1 reviews

It started out like any other normal day. I drove to school, met up with some friends at my locker to talk about boys, then gathered my books and headed off to class. "Senior-itis" was setting in as the school year was just beginning. With graduation crawling closer, I felt ready to go out into the world and take on any challenge that would come my way. I was fearless. I had no idea what would happen that morning to make me realize that maybe I was not as ready as I thought. What happened that day changed my perspective on myself, my family, and my country forever.

On my way to my second class I could hear people talking about what was going on but I just could not put things together. A friend stopped me in the hallway to tell me that an airplane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. From that point on until I left school, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Everyone just sat in their classrooms with their eyes glued to the television sets anxiously awaiting an explanation. It was like watching a suspense movie and trying to figure out who the bad guy was. Everything was happening over and over again right in front of my eyes and I still did not understand or believe it.

Over the next several months I could not turn on the television without seeing replays of the crashes or hearing about Al-Qaida or the Taliban. Aside from constant reminders on the news, I saw extreme changes in the community and world around me. American flags, ribbons, button, bumper stickers, red, white, and blue was everywhere. An enormous sense of patriotism arose from smoke and ash at ground zero that day and it...