A day after the worst terrorist attack in history, Penn students tried returning to normalcy yesterday despite lingering feelings of shock and despair.
In comparison to the previous day's atmosphere of panic and anxiety, campus was much calmer as students began to accept yesterday's nightmare as today's reality.
"It's hitting me much more now," Engineering junior Aeshna Sikand said. "It's just...real now. [Tuesday] it was like a movie."
But as other students walked to class, they still could not fathom the magnitude of the attacks in New York and Washington.
College junior Ann Goldenberg said she went to bed last night and was afraid to wake up in the morning, fearful of more bad news.
"It's still completely surreal, unbelievable and devastating," she said. "You just wonder why something like this could happen and how it could happen."
University administrators decided on Tuesday afternoon to resume classes yesterday. The majority of Penn students found the return to lecture halls and daily routines helpful.
"I needed to be around a lot of people," first-year Graduate School of Fine Arts student Amanda Didden said. "There's something healing about seeing everyone else's reactions and knowing that everyone is feeling basically the same way."
"I also think another day of watching CNN all day long and watching the explosion over and over again was not going to help me make sense of the whole situation," she added.
Even though many students found it hard to sit through lectures and take notes, they were glad classes had resumed.
Wharton junior Nick Reising said that while he recognized fellow students' need for time to deal with the tragedy, he thought the University's decision was a good one.
"It feels like the whole point of all this is [the terrorists] wanted to disrupt everything," he added. Reising, like many others, did not want to give the terrorists that satisfaction.
But some students found the University's decision to reopen offensive.
"I think today should be a day of mourning," College junior Margot Mendelson said. "This isn't showing we're Americans and we can bounce back. This is showing we don't care. It's disrespectful."
Many started their day by devoting some time to reflect on the tragedy.
"I woke up this morning at 6 and went to morning prayer with my church," Nursing senior Jennifer Oh said.
After praying for an hour with fellow congregants, Oh said she felt at peace and capable of attending class.
While the tragedy was still the topic of many conversations on campus, students also returned to typical conversations with friends. They joked, laughed and talked about the first week of classes. The University community began to prepare for today's start of the annual campus-wide No Place Like Penn festivities.
Drexel student Scott Perez-Fox, who is participating in the Penn theater company's production, sold tickets for this weekend's performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
His company discussed at length whether to continue with the show and ultimately decided to hold the performances, but to donate the profits to the American Red Cross for relief aid.
"The show must go on and we're trying to help people with a little bit of levity in this situation," Perez-Fox said. "We're not going to cancel this. We're not going to let the fear and the sadness overwhelm us."
College senior Carrie Zaslow said that although it's been hard for her to deal with the situation, the event has forced her to reassess her own life choices.
"It's kind of hard to articulate my thoughts on it," she said. "For me, it's kind of a time to reevaluate priorities. You never think something like this could happen. It's unfathomable, and when it does, it puts things into perspective."
For an elderly man auditing courses at Penn, the attack had special significance, given what he has lived through in his lifetime.
"Even though the second World War took place when we were children, we pretty much lived in a cocoon here," said Martin Duchovnay, who also attended Penn as an undergraduate in the 1950s. "And that cocoon is broken."
"I'm exhausted from yesterday," he added. "It was draining and frightening and certainly the worst experience that I've witnessed in the [United States]."
Although some Penn New Yorkers said they felt safer on campus than at home, College senior Miriam Tauber decided to return to her Upper East Side home yesterday.
"I'm not going to think it's real until I see that the Twin Towers are no longer there," she said. "I'm surprised that my ATM card still works. I'm surprised that things are still going on [as usual]."
