How we changed

Simeng Sun '08 was in class at Stuyvesant High School, four blocks from the towers. Sandy Charles '05 was watching TV in 1942 Hall. Richard Brand '02 was getting ready for work.

And then the planes struck.

Sun and her fellow students, despite their close proximity to the World Trade Center, "didn't know much about what was going on outside." Neither did many other people.

Charles huddled with eight other students around a single television set in her dorm room, watching as the twin towers burned and then fell. She recalled a photo she had taken of the skyscrapers peeking out from behind the Statue of Liberty during a trip to the monument the previous summer.

"It was just heartbreaking," she recalled.

Meanwhile, Brand, a native New Yorker who had worked for The Miami Herald the summer prior to the attacks, made his way to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan to help the newspaper cover the attack.

"It was overwhelming," he said of his first glimpse of the site. "I remember just walking around, and there was this dust everywhere. When I got home my shoes and my pants and my clothes were just covered with it."

Brand remembered people etching handwritten notes in the layers of dust that covered lower Manhattan. "It was one of the most memorable images for me."

In the five years since 19 young men boarded U.S. jet airliners and changed the course of history, the country has seethed, grieved, sought solace, ached for revenge, been afraid, celebrated victories and ultimately, changed.

For some people, 9/11 modified the course of their lives, sending them on paths they never anticipated prior to the attacks. But for others, the effects of 9/11 have been felt in more subtle ways: a diminished sense of security and the lingering fear of another attack that have been engrained in the ebb and flow of our day-today routines; a shifting political landscape, perhaps with some cynicism about the United States' role in the world; a new notion of heroism.

"I think everyone has sort of adjusted to this new normalcy," said Samantha Cooper Brand '05, who is married to Richard Brand and now studies in New York. "It's a normalcy of heightened awareness ... that we are vulnerable."

"There was a sense that we're America and no one can touch us. And then something like 9/11 happens and that's all over," said Jordan Brock '06, who now lives and works in New York.

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For many Princeton students, hundreds of whom come from the New York area or eventually work there, 9/11 and the fear of another attack transformed their perception of the city, leaving it an unattractive place to live.

September 11 "was a tragedy because it changed what New York meant to me," Charles said of her hometown. "That was the first time I thought, 'Maybe I shouldn't go there [after graduation].' I felt like the New York financial district and New York City itself just became ... a target almost. I felt that if anything were to happen again, it would happen here."

But the apprehension Charles felt in the early days and weeks after the attacks gradually subsided, and she is currently a second-year medical student at Columbia. "I feel very differently now," she said. "Ultimately those ties to New York came through."

That wasn't the case for everyone. Charles noted that some of her peers' choices to pursue post-graduation goals elsewhere besides New York were directly related to the trauma of 9/11. "[When] a good friend of mine got accepted to Columbia he said to me, 'You know what, I just want to be safer.' "

Despite the security concerns, Samantha Brand said she never entertained the possibility of not returning to New York.

"I was born in New York, my whole family lives here," she said. "I always knew I would come back to Manhattan. It's always the place that I have felt most at home and that has not changed since 9/11."

After all, she added, "It's still a challenge to find an apartment in Manhattan."

Brand emphasized, however, that life in New York is not free of concerns over future terrorist attacks. "There is always that sneaking suspicion that something might happen when you least expect it, but you have to live your life and take full advantage of the city and not let that get in your way."

Learning to cope

Though the trauma of the attacks for many remains real, people have found different ways of coping with their memories of what happened as they move on with their lives.

"I respect the memory of it, but I don't like to think about it all the time," Charles said. "I think people want to move on because it is not fun to feel afraid, you want to keep trying to push it back."

For her, it has been important to separate what she sees on the news and what happens in her everyday life. "I think a lot of people are definitely detached. You're like, 'What are the chances it's going to be me? What are the chances that it's going to be this subway?' "

Charles is not alone. Since 2001, Americans have functioned daily in the face of color-coded threat warnings, news of foiled plots and the knowledge that new, homegrown cells might well be planning future attacks.

While Brock, the alumnus who now lives in New York, said he doesn't "worry about terrorism incessantly," fears about terrorism often lurk close to the surface. His first thought when he heard of an explosion in a Manhattan apartment complex, which turned out to be unrelated to terrorism, was that it was an attack.

"The first second you hear about it, you immediately think: terrorist attack."

Others have found different ways of making sense of what happened. Samantha Brand said rather than repressing memories of the attacks, she feels a need to continually bear witness to them. Instead of avoiding documentaries and television programs on the attacks, she said she actively seeks them out.

"I think that it's good for us to watch and to relive if only to remind ourselves that the world is very different now... It still feels very gripping, it's still horrifying to watch people jumping from the buildings, but whenever there's a documentary on the History Channel or something, I feel like I have to watch."

A sense of unity

For some, the shared sense of pain about what happened and fear for what might come next have strengthened their sense of American unity. "I think people are stronger, more united in some way because of that common experience," Sun said.

Others, like Richard Brand, sense a divide between their views and those of other Americans, particularly when it comes to politics.

"I think that more than a lot of my Princeton classmates, I'm pretty conservative in terms of how I view the war on terror," he said. "Maybe it's because the memory of what happened is harder for me to forget."

Samantha, who was a freshman at the University in 2001, recalled that the campus was "business as usual" following the attacks. "Even in that sad, dreadful, tragic period, Princeton was unflappable almost. We pressed forward despite what had happened."

But even then, with reminders of that day ever-present, moving on completely has proved difficult.

"It was a landmark," Richard said of the World Trade Center. "You saw it growing up. You would see it when you were hanging out late at night with your friends ... You think less and less about it as time goes by but there is a sense that it can never really be replaced."