I’d heard rumors that there were hurricanes in New Orleans. The sun beaming through the palm trees melted those concerns away during my tour of Loyola in 2003. New Orleans had me at tropical – it was my choice to disregard the storm part.

Looking back on my first year of college is like watching a trailer about someone else’s life – a montage of scenes of dancing at the Boot, drinking beer at the Fly and hanging out in my dorm room at Loyola.

Then the storm hit.

Katrina came during what was supposed to be the first week of my sophomore year. I evacuated the night before the storm. Eight hours later I was at a family friend’s house in Baton Rouge, where I ended up living in a garage with three other people for the four months I was a displaced kid at LSU.

The day Katrina hit, the sky was the grayest I’d ever seen it. Branches and birds slammed up against the windows for what felt like days. After a few days, we ran low on fresh food and ice. The clothes I’d managed to stuff into a purse were filthy from picking up the garbage and fallen trees in the neighborhood. Eating free bologna in line at the Goodwill store was one of many humbling moments that followed. Two months later I drove home to find my apartment in ruins and all my belongings destroyed by mold or stolen.

A new culture was born in New Orleans.

I don’t have to tell you about the food or the music; if you’ve been here you’ve already experienced them. You know the je ne sais quoi of the bricks on Royal Street, the haunting magnificence of the Garden District mansions and the magic of a long walk on Bayou St. John. It was after Katrina that a new culture emerged: a culture of comeback, of resilience, of rebirth. It created a generation of people, including transplants like me, who would be bound together and to this city and its recovery. I don’t just mean the 20-somethings who lined up to get fleur-de-lis tattoos (which, ok, I did get). I mean a variety of residents from all walks of life who committed themselves to this city, whether or not they were born here.

We are making the new great American city here.

Why did I stay? People asked me then and they still ask me 10 years later. I tell them it’s not about why I didn’t leave; it’s about why I stayed. It’s why I clawed my way back into the city the second I could and never left. New Orleans wasn’t something I could leave behind – it stayed with me, and it stayed with the rest of the people who couldn’t wait to come home. So many classmates went back Northeast for good and, believe me, I understand. Why would anyone want to stay in a place that lost everything? But you know what? It didn’t lose everything. Somehow, the storm didn’t swallow the spirit of New Orleans.

Katrina created a generation of true, new New Orleanians. We’re bonded together by this unexpected initiation we somehow survived. Ten years later, it’s not perfect and it probably won’t ever be, but it’s still here, and we’re here to stay.