Born not even half a minute apart, identical twins Andrea and Alissa Pedersen, both freshmen in pre-architecture, spend about that much time apart every day.

“Since we have classes the same, we don’t do things separately,” Alissa says.

Growing up in the small town of Milford, Neb., with one younger brother, the women say there has never been a time in their lives when they desired to be different from each other.

As they sit across from each other in their dorm room in Elm Hall, they struggle to explain their similarities. They feel like they share the same interests, abilities and preferences in nearly everything.

The women, who affectionately call each other “Missy,” readily admit they do practically everything together and make nearly all of the same choices. They say it’s not something they do on purpose, however.

“We just try to be ourselves. We make our own decisions at the same time,” Alissa says.

They say that for them, wanting to do the same things is natural because they are so much alike.

“I’m not connected to her; it’s not like I couldn’t go do something different if I chose to,” Andrea says.

Although they give themselves the freedom to make their own choices, education is an area where the women’s choices are the same. They both chose Iowa State because of the campus, and they both chose architecture because they have been interested in it since a sixth-grade class project. Their similarities even go as far as wanting to do homework at the same time.

Their identical tendencies also stretch to their room arrangement. They sit in the same kind of chair, a small TV in front of each, with a table in between them holding the exact same arrangement of magazines, remote controls, cell phones and tissue boxes. The only noticeable difference is that the magazines are different issues and the chairs are different colors.

Different colors are often the only distinguishing factor between the twins. From birth, their mom dressed them in matching clothes, but of different colors.

They’ve continued this tradition to this day.

“We just feel comfortable wearing the same clothes, so we’ve never thought too much about dressing differently,” Andrea says.

The girls say they used to think about dressing differently, but because it has never bothered either one of them they have never acted on it.

They say it is kind of a comfort zone, but they also like it and want to continue.

Besides, deciding what to wear is easy, they say.

“We talk about what to wear, or we just feel like dressing up or dressing down on the same days,” Alissa says.

People have different reactions to them dressing the same, and Andrea says it can sometimes come across as rude when people make loud comments in public.

The girls have also gotten their fair share of dumb twin questions and comments.

“The weirdest thing we get sometimes is people ask if we are twins and then ask if we’re sisters,” Alissa says.

Andrea says always being referred to as twins can be hard because they don’t like being thought of as one identity.

“Some people have made the comment that when they see me they see half a person,” Alissa says.

“We’re still individuals, and we want to have our own identity.”

The girls say they maintain their own identities by always staying true to themselves and not doing things or liking certain things just because the other one does.

There are a few ways that the girls are different, though.

Alissa writes with her left hand and Andrea writes with her right hand, making them literally a mirror-image of each other.

They also have slightly different personalities — Andrea usually takes things more seriously.

“You can probably tease me a little longer,” Alissa says.

Even with their personality differences, Alissa and Andrea have always had the same friends and can’t recall doing anything without the other during high school or college.

Despite sharing friendships, they’ve never had a jealousy issue, even if one friend would call one of them more than the other.

“It’s really …” Alissa says.

“… no big deal,” Andrea finishes.

Do the girls often finish each other’s sentences?

They look at each other and giggle with the same laugh.

“Yeah, we do,” they say in unison.

Being able to finish each other’s sentences isn’t surprising, considering they have been separated very few times in their lives.

Since high school, they have had all their classes together and have only been apart when they were younger and separately went to camp and to their grandparents’ homes.

It was during one of these trips when they were about 10 or 12 that the girls experienced a sort of sixth-sense connection.

“I just had this sense that something was not right,” Andrea says.

Andrea called home to find out that Alissa had, in fact, just fallen and sprained her ankle.

The girls usually don’t have to depend on this connection because they are always together, a commitment that has kept them from some of activities, especially dating.

Alissa and Andrea have never dated and admit that when they start, it will be hard for them.

“We do almost everything together, so it would be weird to be out on a date with someone without her,” Andrea says.

The girls say they don’t have to date twins, but, smiling at the possibility, of course they are not opposed to it.

After they graduate, the girls both want to go to a bigger city and have a career in architecture.

They say it is not out of the question to live in different cities at first, though they would eventually like to start a company together.

“It just depends on where we can get jobs, but I don’t want to live too far apart because there would be high phone bills,” Andrea says.