When I tell people at college I’m from Iowa, I get a lot of confused looks. “Whoa, haven’t heard that before,” is the usual response. Iowa is not a place people think about a great deal.

But once in every four years Iowa becomes a Very Important Place. A Place that draws headlines across the globe, the kind of Place where, if you are a resident, you will draw looks of envy, especially from Political Science majors. This is because every four years the Iowa Caucuses take place.

The Iowa Caucuses, for the politically challenged, are the very first election in the presidential nomination race. You may have heard New Hampshire go on about how they are “The First Primary in a Nation.” True, they are the first primary election, but this is because a caucus is a very different creature than a primary. I didn’t realize how different a creature until my very first one.

I’m pretty apathetic politically. The last time I can recall getting excited about any political issue was when I was in eighth grade and I had to argue about nuclear energy in a classroom debate. This class opened up a whole realm of issues I’d never even thought of, and it was quickly clear which side of the issues I stood on. Conservatives reminded me too much of my wet-blanket father’s “can’t do this, can’t do that” attitude. (As it turns out, my father actually is a conservative. I try not to hold it against him.) Liberals were for gay rights, and my favorite relatives were my two aunts in Wisconsin, and in general the liberal ideas went along with the Everybody’s Equal slogans that had been pumped into my brain since I was five. The only thing I didn’t agree with the liberals on was affirmative action, because I didn’t want anyone giving me a hand because of my race.  (Later I learned that, as an Asian-American, no one is going to be helping me out because of my race. My over-achieving peers and I get no pity in the academic field.) From then on I considered myself Liberal, and haven’t really worried about it too much since.

When it came time to register to vote, however, I stuck with Independent. At that point I realized that, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, almost all politicians are full of crap. I didn’t really want to associate myself too strongly with any of them. Voting in general fell to the back of my mind, lacking the priority of say, the next episode of Heroes or where my next meal was going to come from.

Until this fall when the same question kept popping up: Are you going to Caucus?

I suddenly  realized this wasn’t just any election, this was an election that made Iowa Really Important. And I am completely gung-ho about Iowa being Really Important. Participating in anything that made my home state seem a little cooler was up at the top of my priority list.

So, when I wasn’t watching every episode of Arrested Development or eating tortilla chips, I spent my break going to Democratic candidate rallies in poorly-ventilated middle school. I watched debates online. I listened to my friend’s older sister, a Hillary Clinton campaign worker, talk on and on about “HRC” and Bill Clinton’s apparent affinity for Pizza Hut Pizza.

All this work, and the night before the Caucuses I still had no fucking idea who I was going to stand for.

And when I say “stand for,” I mean it, literally. And here is the reason why the caucuses are different than a primary. You don’t just wander into an elementary school and punch in your choices on a computer, oh no. The Caucuses don’t work like that.

Instead, I wandered, confused, into the high school near my house with my mother, an “HRC” supporter, and we were herded around the halls by teenagers in “Rock the Caucus” T-shirts as if we were sheep. I was herded into a line to change my party affiliation to “Democrat,” and then I was herded into a stuffy cafeteria with my fellow voting cattle.

Everyone was clustered into little groups around campaign signs because see, in a Caucus you don’t vote with your finger, you vote with your whole body. You literally stand underneath the sign for your candidate of choice, and they count your heads and hand-mail them to Caucus HQ. It’s a very low-tech, non-confidential system based on the idea of community and that, here in Iowa, we talk to each other.  It’s quirky and weird and pretty much sums up my state entirely.

Walking into the cafeteria with everyone huddled under signs as if they were in elaborate, politics-driven cliques, I still wasn’t really sure who to vote for. I’d canceled Edwards out because I simply didn’t like him and had spent the night before stuck between Hillary and Obama. I even resorted to taking an online quiz designed to match me with the candidate I agree with most on the issues. It told me to vote for Dennis Kucinich. My friend from high school begged me to stand up in a corner, alone, and in front of my mother, neighbors, and high school classmates, scream, “I SAW A UFO, TOO.”

After looking back and forth at the Hillary and Obama supporters like a high school freshmen looking to decide the rest of his/her high school social life, I sat for Hillary. I’m not going to lie—part of me was really intimidated by the idea of sitting with the Obama supporters alone, awkward. The biggest objection in my head, however, was the realization that Obama has been in Senate almost as long as I have been in college, and when it comes to campus life I am still a huge doofus.

When I left the caucus, pleased that the hard part of my presidential election decision was over, I suddenly wanted to live in Iowa forever. I never get this feeling, and at first I thought it was some kind of gag reflex, like I was going to vomit. But no, it was merely an overwhelming sense of love for the place I can call, on my voter’s registration card at least, home. And I was also sad, because it is likely that this is going to be my first and last caucus. As much as I love Iowa (I know this is a shocker, but I really do love it) I have no desire to spend my adulthood there. I have a lot of other stuff to do before returning to the place of my childhood.

And other places have other things to offer too. Weird food items, parades of cross-dressing firefighters, and a surprisingly small Colonial bell are just a few things Pennsylvania has to offer.

But how many places have an election that sounds like a naughty part of the human anatomy?