I remember turning 18 and registering to vote my first semester of college. It was an exciting experience. Being at school in Iowa, we basically get to do everything first when it comes to politics and voting was no different. We even had different political candidates come to visit. That was in 2012 and this year, 2016, has been no different. Political clubs on campus encourage students to get involved and we have hosted some of the most popular candidates running for political office this year including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. After attending a town hall meeting with Bernie Sanders, I decided that I was indeed 'feeling the Bern' and I needed to help out in any way that I could. Not only by voting in November, but by caucusing in February. But first I had to figure out what caucusing was.

I had never caucused before and had originally shied away from the idea of doing something foreign to me, but as I became more aware of the closeness of the race between Hillary and Bernie I felt like my voice would count and was necessary. As a Bernie supporter I felt like I had to do everything I could to help. The night before, I researched caucusing and made sure I was still registered to vote. I also looked up my precinct, which is something you need to know because each precinct has a separate caucus! The caucus was scheduled for 7:00 p.m. with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. so I arrived promptly at about 6:15. The line was already getting long and it was interesting to be mingling with not only Bernie supporters but also Hillary and O'Malley supporters. Regardless, they were all friendly faces. I got to skip the messy voter registration forms and took a seat inside. I had no idea where I should have been sitting, but I paid attention to a few girls who seemed to be working the event and they mentioned separating the participants by precinct. They eventually separated the room and we sat around for what seemed like forever. The event was supposed to start at 7:00 p.m., but didn't actually start until around 7:50 p.m. Then we had to vote in a president and secretary to run the caucus. Two people nominated themselves and we all just went with it because many of us had no idea who these people were or why we had to vote them in to run the caucus. They then explained a few things to us and the caucus finally started. At this point I had already been around for an hour.

For the actual caucus, they counted us all and got a number around 300. They then called out the three democratic candidates along with an undecided group. As participants, we all went to our chosen sections and cheered on our selected candidates. From there it was all "caucus mathematics." They individually counted each person in their respective groups and in turn that somehow came out as delegates. To have a single delegate, each group had to have at least 60 or 70 people. The only candidate that had enough was Bernie Sanders with around 220-plus people in the group (Go Bernie!). This means that there had to be a realignment. The people whose groups weren't big enough for a delegate had to chose another side whether it be undecided or Bernie Sanders. Bernie supporters spent about 20 minutes trying to convince others to join their group and eventually some did. In the end we got about five delegates for Bernie and it was on the next part of the night. At this point it was nearing 8:45 p.m. and since we were no longer needed for numbers' purposes, I left. All-in-all, it was definitely an interesting experience and I do think that I made a difference. Hillary and Bernie were running a close race all night in Iowa and many don't regard it as a win for Hillary because there was such a slight difference in numbers between the two. I know that this is going to be an interesting and tough race for presidency and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in New Hampshire next.