Beyond the obvious factors — physical awkwardness, emotional awkwardness and social awkwardness — there is very little we remember about junior high.

Unfortunately, one of the things not on that list of forgetfulness was the horrid morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The majority of our undergraduate students were at their respective middle schools on that fateful morning when the terrorists drew a fatal blow to American life the way we knew it. Used to only reading about those history book moments, our generation was finally one.

That day, we all watched in fear. We were confused. We were unsure what the future would hold.

But we were not alone. Our members of Congress gathered on the steps of the nation’s Capitol as one party rather than two and sang “God Bless America.” Our relatively new president spoke to us with conviction and vowed to retaliate against “those behind these evil acts.” And our communities gathered for vigils, organized blood drives and contributed all they could to the victims and their families.

The moments of the attacks may have been America at its absolute worst, but the minutes, hours and days after the attacks when we were able to honor our fallen yet look forward as one certainly may have been America at its absolute best.

Even the editorial of The State Press published on Sept. 12, 2001, reflected this somber yet resolute tone, saying to the readers “While we’re paralyzed by the sheer terror of this act, we must not live in the shock that was Tuesday, and we must take complete control of what is to come. The next day, the next week, the next 20 years — everything has changed and we must change with it.”

Though we were split across the nation — across the world, even — on that day, we are brought together here today, seven years later, also reading the editorial of our campus newspaper.

Now, with an eye cast respectfully toward today’s tributes that honor what was lost on that awful day, we must also look toward the direction we have gone as a nation since we lost nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans.

The Congress that assembled as one in an act of patriotism is far removed from the Congress that occupies Capitol Hill today and accomplishes little due to its seemingly insatiable thirst for inane partisan bickering. The main culprit behind the evil acts is still at large while hundreds of thousands of troops rebuild another nation uninvolved in the attacks. And, with the annual exception of the Fourth of July, our communities are bitterly divided between red and blue rather than being united by red, white and blue.

Our paper’s Sept. 12 editorial was right: With the attacks, everything changed and we had to change with it.

Now, seven years later, we must ask: Is this the change we wanted?