Today is the 5th anniversary of 9-11. 

I was in the McLean building of Stevens Institute of Technology for an Engineering Design III lab when it happened.  One of the guys in my class walked out in the hall to go to the bathroom.  When he came back, he said, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."  My professor said, "Oh yeah, and a giant gorilla is climbing up the Empire State Building."  We all walked down the hall to get a clear view across the river.  After a couple minutes, we watched as the second plane hit. 

At least two people I went to school with said they were supposed to be working in one of the towers that day but for whatever reason didn't make it into work.  One guy said he missed his alarm and overslept.  By the time he got up, the bad stuff was already happening. 

My design lab ended early because nobody could really focus, and most of the campus/area was in a mild panic.  I've never seen so many people on cell phones at one time.  I had another class or two later in the day, and I was surprised to find that one of the classes went on as if nothing happened.  That class was Gerald Rothberg's Thermodynamics.  I guess nothing can stop Thermo. 

As I walked back from class, I stopped at a few points along the river.  After a few minutes of watching smoke billow out the top of the buildings, I walked away in a daze.  Ten seconds later, I heard people scream and gasp, so I ran back to one of the viewpoints.  One of the towers had just fallen, and the dust cloud was covering much of lower Manhattan.  I spent a little while watching CNN in a public area (Jacobus), and after a little while, the second tower fell.  I remember thinking after the first one, "I can't believe an entire building just collapsed.  There's no way the other one can fall."  But it did.  I watched the second tower fall on TV, then walked outside to watch the dust cloud.  It was pretty crazy. 

I needed to get a haircut that day, and I decided to get it despite all the chaos.  I sort of felt weird/bad about it, but I rationalized that no terrorist was gonna stop me from getting a haircut.  Take that, terrorism. 

For weeks or months after this event, I (and probably most other people) would look into the sky every time I heard a plane passing overhead and think, "Great, here comes another plane crashing into another building."  But it offered at least some consolation that there were a few fighter jets flying in circles over the area at all times. #sociology