Freshman year

By Ashley Hinson: I had just started my freshman year of college at the University of Southern California. So when the attacks happened, I was still sleeping. Our phone rang. It was my roommate's mom, calling to say, “Turn on the TV.”

What we saw next still makes my eyes well up. The chaos of the attacks was in full force, as my roomie and I switched between all the networks. We couldn't even believe what we were seeing.

Then there was panic because rumors had started flying that a plane had been hijacked in Los Angeles, too.

I never left my TV that day. The next day in my journalism history class, we just went around the room, talking about how we felt about the attacks and what it meant about our future role as journalists.

We knew nothing would ever be the same.