It was my third week of school, only my third week of being away from home and living on my own for the first time in my life. I felt lost as it was, adrift among the things I thought I wanted, unsure of exactly why I had come to this place, so far from all the people and places I knew and loved, to pursue an education I wasn’t convinced I was ready for.

I was sitting in my dorm room in front of my computer (as always), and from down the hall I started to hear gasps of surprise. All was silent for a few moments until a girl came and stood in my doorway. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center! Turn on your TV.”

“What? Why?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They think it was an accident.”

So I turned on my TV and instantly I saw footage of a gaping hole in the side of the WTC’s north tower, with fire blazing out of it and a thick column of smoke curling into the air. I watched, mesmerized, while they replayed the plane’s crash into the building’s side and wondered, “How did this happen? Those people must have been so terrified before they died.”

Three minutes after I began taking in the extent of the damage done by the first plane crash and considering the lives lost, I saw another plane approaching the towers. I looked on in horror as this plane tore into the side of the WTC’s south tower. As I began to cry, through my tears I could see the shards of glass and steel exploding from the building, bright orange and grey mushroom clouds blooming from its walls. “Another airplane has crashed,” proclaimed the TV announcer in a rather shaky voice. “We’re not sure what is happening, but this cannot be a coincidence.”

All I could think of were the poor people trapped inside of those planes, in those buildings, literally dying to escape.

I called my mother at work right afterward because I had to make sure she was all right — even though she worked in South Dakota and neither of us were anywhere near the East Coast, I was paranoid that something else was going to happen. I had become insecure about my safety and the safety of people I loved.

I felt powerless.

It turns out that was the point.

Information on the crashes leaked out slowly. Step by step, the crashes became terrorist attacks, and we learned of two more — one on the Pentagon and a seemingly failed attempt obliterated in the Pennsylvanian countryside. An “accident” became a deliberate attempt by Islamic extremists to slaughter innocent people and take out some of the most renowned symbols of U.S. dominance and power.

We as Americans were finally forced to realize we are not infallible or protected from the dangers other people face every day elsewhere. We were shown our vulnerabilities and had them spit in our face. We were chastened and, the terrorists hoped, put in our place, newly aware that we aren’t masters of the universe.

With the destruction of U.S. symbols of economic and military control, we should have been duly humbled. After all, we were given pause to inwardly reflect on our ethnocentric attitudes of superiority over and aggression against “inferior” nations. Many questions these attacks raised were valid ones: What gives the United States the right to dominate other nations? Is the kind of power we have in the world arbitrarily given or have we earned it?

What exactly is it that we think makes this country “the best?”

We never stopped to reflect on what, in all our sheltered, cheeseburger-eating, flag-waving American lives, we have been allowed to take for granted that other people simply don’t have: freedom, opportunity and a living wage. The fact that I am allowed to wear pants is absolutely astonishing in some parts of the world.

After Sept. 11, I was sickened by the surge of patriotism many people in this country showed — everyone was sticking American flags (or should I say egos) on their car antennas, blustering on about how great our country is and damning anyone who dared speak against them.

What better way to prove the terrorists’ negative view of us right than to begin condemning their culture and recklessly trying to engage in a “war on terrorism” that will never be won?

What these attacks should have opened our eyes to we have shut out — we are effectively avoiding our own responsibility for Sept. 11 while examining the terrorists and others’ responsibility too closely. If anything, Sept. 11 should show us we have a place in the world that is not above all other nations, but rather side by side with them. If we do not change our attitudes, the things we used to take for granted may entirely disappear.