Nine/Eleven
Starting out the countdown at #50 are the events of 9/11/2001.
As everybody does, I remember the events of that day as clear as if it were yesterday. My first year at Johnson & Wales had started a few days before. That day was a pretty full day for me too, 4 classes, and a PBL meeting at 5:15. I was on my way back from my first class of the day which I believe was Honors Introduction to Literary Genres (when I was still in the honors program).
I walked into my room on the 5th floor of McNulty Hall and as if somebody knew I had walked in - the phone rang. It was my roommate's mom, and she had said:
Oh my god, are you guys alright? Where's Oliver? Is he there? Did you see what happened?
Having no idea what she was talking about, I said that Oliver was in class and that I had just got in. Living in Colorado and having never been to New England, she didn't realize how far that we were from the disaster. Next she told me to turn on the TV, and as ABC News came on, I saw the 2nd plane hit. There's nothing else I could have felt but shock, and I just stood there for a while watching. It's funny, because when people see something tragic like this happen, or when you see any disaster whether it's major or not, you can't help but stare.
I had rushed out to see if any of my floor mates could use some consoling and I stayed with a few of them for a while, since school for the day was later cancelled. That's most of what I remembered. I would later walk to the different dorms and academic halls to find my friends to see if they were okay.
But rather than rehash statements that were made in 2001 and still made to this day, I'll stop my recollection there and encourage comments about that day, not necessarily what the effects were afterwards, because that's all history.