So often I’ve heard about how there is no culture at Iowa State, and so often I’ve tended to agree with that thought.

Ames is obviously not New York or Paris. For that matter it’s not even Minneapolis or Omaha. Ames is Ames, and we will never have here what is found in larger cities all over the world.

But just for a second, don’t look at this community and this university by big city standards and see what is left. We have patterns, habits, traditions and relationships that are unique to us as members of the Iowa State community. In a loose way, this is our culture. And like it or not, it helps to define us.

We are members of a relatively small community in the middle of a giant cornfield. The nearest city with a real skyline and a major league baseball team is 3 1/2 hours away. There is no thriving music scene here by the standards of places like Seattle or Los Angeles. And while the faculty may boast about winning a Pulitzer Prize or two, nobody would compare Ames’ literary circle with that of New York’s.

We don’t have these things here to rally around or to become a part of or help define us as individuals, but we are still a group of people with many common practices and activities. And we often have more in common than we think.

We are still pretty much a homogeneous bunch. Most of us come from small towns in Iowa, but not all of us do. Many of us are from distant cities, and several of us are from foreign countries. Hardly any of us are from Ames, yet we come here to share and learn, to interact and grow. After a few years, most of us move on, but a part of us will always be here, and a part of Iowa State will always be with us.

In the mean time, this is what’s ours, and this is how we live:

We refuse to walk across the Zodiac in the Memorial Union, for fear of failing our next test.

We kiss each other underneath the Campanile at midnight.

On Friday afternoons, we walk to the bars with giant plastic mugs and drink lots of beer.

We sleep on the second floor of the library, and all too often we live off the food we find at the Hub.

Though none of us can quite remember reading this anywhere, we all know to show up for afternoon classes at 10 minutes after the hour.

We feed the swans on Lake LaVerne. None of us sleep enough. We are all experts in Ramen Noodle cuisines. We shake our keys during kickoffs of football games.

Very few of us know the real words to our school song, and even less are willing to sing it.

We dislike the parking police on campus.

We all seem to dress alike: Stussy caps, flannel shirts and faded jeans. One minor difference: the greeks tend to tuck their flannels in, the non-greeks don’t.

We all have a favorite spot on campus — a spot that we feel is our own.

We build giant lawn displays for Homecoming, and we build giant floats for Veishea.

We consider visiting Beardshear Hall the college equivalent of visiting the principal’s office.

We pay too much for textbooks, and we get precious little on sellbacks.

We either drive, walk, bike or take the bus to campus. But regardless of how we get there, we all refuse to yield for each other.

We are envious of the University of Iowa. We always seem to have a craving for cheap pizza or Asian fast food.

We’ve all heard stories about Veishea riots.

We don’t always understand each other, and we never fully agree on anything.

We talk about leaving Iowa.

Iowa State is our world for now. Our lives may be lacking what much of the world already has in terms of culture, but the world will be there for us when we leave here. In the mean time we have each other, and we have this university.

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Troy McCullough is a senior in journalism and mass communication from from Pleasantville. He is editor in chief of the Daily.