Reflections on 9/11

For a moment we were all Americans

It was my second week as a Ph.D. student. I had gotten over the initial jitters of being a new teaching assistant, meeting my professors, and engaging an entirely new level of work. Overcoming some significant struggles and hurdles, I was settling into a new restaurant job and apartment in Albany, New York with my wife and two-year-old daughter. It would be fair to say that as I was finishing…