There is no yearbook at Iowa State. There has not been one since 1994, when “The Bomb” bombed, so to speak. That is one thing we noticed in planning out how to end our year.

Today’s paper is our last real paper; the finals week edition is always a different, tabloid format. We noted, in that meeting, that a lot of really cool things have happened at Iowa State this year. On this column’s sidebar is our list of the Top 10 most important events.

Today’s Daily is different from all the others we have done this year. We have dispensed with our normal formatting and our normal practice of relying on words to tell our stories. We have not printed any new content today, in fact. One reason for the Daily’s existence is so that students can practice the journalism they study, but we had our end-of-semester party yesterday.

The party that is this edition of the Daily is for you.

So here it is, in your hands: our best photographs from what we thought were the most important stories on campus since August.

History, which is involved with any yearbook project, is the study of change. That much is self-evident: Of course the past is different from the present. Much as we would like to equate some current events to those of yesteryear, in anything from our own lives to the state of our country, we do not live in the past. As a history major, however, I have learned in the past four years that history is also the study of continuities through change.

History deals just as much with comparison as it does with contrasts.

We also dispensed with our sections for today. There is no News section, no Sports, no Ames247 and no Opinion. We have told the ISU story chronologically, rather than thematically. Some of these events are bigger than others. It may be easier for you to remember the football team’s victory against Oklahoma State or Royce White’s departure to the NBA than it is for you to recall the Iowa Straw Poll, Destination Iowa State or the fact that some students began their year sleeping in dormitory dens rather than in real accommodations.

But none of those events were isolated. Just like always, everything important that happened here or was done by Iowa Staters exists within the context of other events.

My first three years here, I was disengaged from most things about Iowa State. I held the university (including this newspaper I now work for) and its community in contempt. Since becoming more involved, however, I have noticed that this year has been the crucible of an explosion of activity.

Before classes began, politicians and media from all over the country flocked to Ames to cover the Republican Party in the Iowa Straw Poll, which can be an indicator of who will become the nominee for president. During move-in, students descended on Ames in droves of thousands, and the Department of Residence had to improvise to provide them all with living space.

President Gregory Geoffroy ended his tenure as president of our university, and Steven Leath replaced him in January. Since then, more leadership changes have taken place — deans, vice presidents and now a provost. In a major upset, our football team defeated the No. 2-ranked team from Oklahoma State. Dance Marathon raised record amounts of money for the Children’s Miracle Network.

With the Occupy movement, students organized protests and injected themselves into issues they thought were important. They continued doing so, after a mistake with our “Just Sayin’” column, and exposed the prevalence of prejudice here. Students for and against the beef industry’s use of “lean finely textured beef” spoke out about it, and Gov. Terry Branstad even took part in a forum to dispel popularized factual inaccuracies on it.

Student debt persisted as an issue, so much so that President Barack Obama visited the University of Iowa on Wednesday. We learned that the Regents require Iowa State to hold back a certain portion of tuition money for scholarships to other students, and the legislature continued to debate how much money it would fund the Regents.

And with Veishea, we celebrated it all. We at the Daily have gone out on limbs we have never gone out on before with products such as our tablet edition, PDF editions for the OSU game and the caucuses, and new formatting styles. Iowa State and its student body have also gone out on limbs they’ve never gone out on before.

This year has been one of great change, great enthusiasm and great participation.

As you peruse these pages, consider how far the Iowa State community has come in the past year. Consider where it has not gone, what has been left undone. And to everyone who is not yet moving on from Iowa State — consider where we should go in the future.

Above all, consider how we have learned from each other. Note how we’re similar to when we began our adventures, and how we’re different. Change isn’t bad; it’s just different. It is from what is different that we learn; if we go through our lives without ever changing, we have learned nothing.

And learning is what we’re here to do.