The 9/11 Micro-Generation

For those in college on 9/11, worlds collapsed and opened like never before

A Millennial in Denial

To some degree I’ve always felt that my experience as a Millennial didn’t quite fit the norm. It’s not just that I didn’t wear jeans until 7th grade or felt more attached to the jazz my parents listened to than with the Back Street Boys.

Over the years, in discussions with friends and family, I’ve tried to pin exactly what the difference is and why it mattered. People describe Millennials as a generation of digital natives and while it’s true I gained an early mastery of Oregon Trail and the Police Quest DOS game, my digital nativism has its roots in loud dial up rings, GeoCities sites, and a beeper than the iPhones some Millennials pocketed as high school freshmen.

But this past Fall, as people shared their stories looking back 20 years, I had a realization that I’ve never put to words before: 9/11 put me on a direct path to where I am now largely because of where I was when the world ground to a halt.

Almost everyone I know who was in their first years of college when the towers fell shares this connection.

What defines our micro-generation? We were in a uniquely flexible and vulnerable space as our fears, hopes, aspirations, and understanding of the world were all challenged and changed.

Where it began

I entered college intending to become a lawyer. I liked to debate, write, read, and wrestle with all sides of an argument. I thought this is what lawyers did (wrong) and thought it was prestigious and what I was supposed to do as a “good Jewish kid” from the ‘burbs (also wrong).

About a week into my freshman year, I was getting ready to walk to my 9:30am class on Revolutionary Russia across the campus (there is so much that is Freshman about that sentence) when I pulled up my browser which had CNN set as my home page and I paused.

I thought the site was hacked. CNN displayed a new layout with just a photo of the first tower engulfed in smoke, a large headline about planes crashing into the tower, and some other links that have faded from my memory. I hit refresh a few times, in denial about what was happening around me, but after the third refresh when the picture changed to show the second plane hitting the tower something much darker began to fill the air.

At first, confusion. I ran across the quad to my friend’s place who had a TV and as the crowd grew in the small room, we all watched in silence trying to make meaning alongside the dumbfounded reporters. Some running toward the scene, others running away covered in ash. Nothing made sense.

Then fear. My dad often worked at Chase plaza — just a few blocks away from where the towers were and my attempts to reach him were all met by busy signals. I got through to my mom after the third try — the lines were jammed to their limit. She knew nothing either. No one was getting through.

Finally, as it became increasingly clear we were under attack and the enormity of the devastation hit home, I joined with my classmates for a vigil as we listened to the Dean and other professors offer reflections on the day’s events. We cried, we hugged. But mostly I remember the silence and blank stares as we began to absorb the truths of the history we were living.

A Pivot

By the end of my first year, I still thought my path was to the law and was able to secure a summer job at a firm in the city that quickly dispelled me of that notion. As more and more people around me asked, “are you sure you want to be a lawyer?” I took their own not-so-subtle self-doubt at face value. I was in fact not at all sure and the events of the past year had me questioning much more than my career choice.

Over the next two years I focused my studies on international relations, the history and politics of foreign aid, and the connection between the media and war-time politics all to better understand: “how did we get here?” I dove into Arabic literature and history while learning more about our own country’s dark past and present with interventionist military action. The more I learned the more I understood how little I knew.

For many, college is uniquely the kind of place where you can spend a day studying about mushrooms, early Arabic literature, and Beowulf and it doesn’t feel out of place. For so many in my generation who were in college those few years after 9/11, those years allowed us to challenge, explore, and dive into new philosophies, religions, cultures, and histories with relative ease.

I was lucky in so many ways. Privileged in my financial security to not have loans to focus on after graduation. Fortunate to have my dad safe at home — although not unscathed (more on this later). White, cis, heterosexual, and male in a world crafted to benefit that identity (although I certainly didn’t have the words or understanding of privilege to understand that at the time). And so I could follow the whims of my curiosity in a place designed for just that: a big, well funded, liberal arts university.

In the hills and chills of Ithaca, like so many millennials in college at the moment, I found a taste for something different.