My family is the kind of close where we eat dinner together every night.

While I never hesitate to critique my dad’s cooking (culinary risks are taken, and few succeed), I appreciate the ritual—the company, the constancy, and the wonder of where my dad found this mystery meat.

As a psychologist with a PhD, I guess he’s got bigger things to do than cook.

I walk into the kitchen, and my genius brother has taken over the whiteboard again. Some theorem, some proof—Goldbach’s conjecture? The Riemann hypothesis? I wouldn’t know—sorry, Matthias.

His numbers are like symbols from a foreign world, precise yet impenetrable, designed for minds that don’t require translation. He tosses some cryptic math jargon at my dad, who’s always ready with a follow-up comment.

My sister, deep into her psychology studies, picks up the thread, and before long, we’re all swept up in a conversation that moves quickly—mathematics, psychology, and science.

Welcome to the Hannesson family dinner table talk.

It’s like they’re speaking a secret family dialect, and I’m sitting there just trying to look like I belong without nodding off.

Now listen, if you asked me to describe myself, I’d lead with “passionate.”

I’m the person who’ll talk for hours about anything from 18th-century literature to obscure art history. I love diving deep and getting lost in intellectual things. But here, at the dinner table, surrounded by minds that speak in equations and theories, I realize:

I’m here. But I’m not this.

~

Family influences your career. That’s not advice—it’s just statistical destiny.

A 2017 analysis by The New York Times found that children are roughly twice as likely to work in a profession if their parents were employed in that area. Statistically speaking, I was hardly alone in my decision.

It’s easy to see why. When you grow up surrounded by a particular field, it feels like a natural extension of yourself, a language you’ve absorbed without realizing.

Take my first year of university. I was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, mainly because… well, family. But we’ve been through this.

You see, I enrolled in one of the most exciting and inspiring courses of the semester: Physics 111. I enrolled with my dear sister Katrin, who needed the course for her BSc in Psychology, so I naturally followed suit.

Let me paint the picture. Eight in the morning. Physics. Me, dragging myself out of bed three times a week to sit through lectures that felt more like endurance tests than intellectual ones.

For the first time, I understood the meaning of a Sisyphean task—pushing a boulder up a hill just to watch it roll right back down. That’s physics for you.

Never blindly tag along with others, because following someone else’s path can sometimes lead you straight to an 8:30 am physics lecture.

I was also knee-deep in psychology courses. To reiterate: my dad (the infamous psychologist) and Katrin (the eager student on her own psych journey) practically lived in a world of theories, insights, and debates about human behaviour.

And let’s be clear: psychology is fascinating. I get it. I appreciate introspection, and I’m all for analyzing why people act the way they do.

In fact, I’ll always be grateful for my year of psychology—mainly because it granted me an almost superhuman ability to psychoanalyze every person I meet.

Seriously, I’m so good at it now.

Here’s the catch: as my dad and Katrin would rattle off their theories at the dinner table, I often felt like I was attending a conference for a subject I wasn’t entirely sure I belonged to. Not only that, but I straight up didn’t care.

I love my sister dearly, but that woman can—and will—talk at length about what she’s learning in school. I knew it was a bad sign that I was annoyed at her science talk rather than interested.

As I waited (im)patiently for Katrin to shut up, I wondered if I had just been trying to find a way to belong in a world that wasn’t really mine. Therein I realized that as much as I love my family and as close as we are, I didn’t have to be just like them.

Because family really isn’t about that stuff, and deep down I knew it didn’t matter. Sure, they tried to guide me, and I may feel like they are more similar to each other in interests than I am, they were all uniquely instrumental in my university development.

The real turning point came when I stepped outside the bubble of family influence and into something that felt more… me.

Something that didn’t need to be explained to me at the dinner table, something that I didn’t have to justify or debate. I’ve talked a thousand times about this switch—I won’t belabour it, but it was the first true, genuine act of self-definition I ever made.

For so long, I’d say my entire degree, my sense of identity was a carefully curated list of ‘not me’s’. Not a psychology major. Not a science girlie. Not someone who thrived on group projects or early morning classes. Not an outgoing student.

It was easier to focus on what I wasn’t than to figure out what I actually was.

Especially when this person has always been—and, at this rate, will likely always be—a work in progress.

Turns out, that’s not such a bad thing. In making the switch, I didn’t just change majors; I learned that self-advocacy isn’t just an occasional necessity but something I care about deeply. Speaking up, standing my ground, figuring out what I believe and saying it like I mean it—those things became part of me.

There’s a certain power in having a belief, in choosing something about myself or about the world and backing it with my entire soul. That refusal to half-commit that’s fundamentally Ella.

I’ll always be grateful for the beginning of my academic trajectory. It didn’t show me what I wanted, but it made it incredibly clear what I didn’t want.

There’s power in that. Sometimes, discovering what’s not for you is just as valuable as discovering what is.

Take my sister Katrin, for example. If it weren’t for her, I might have never realized how much I truly hate graduation ceremonies. Thanks to her experience, I got a free preview of the whole sweaty, cramped gymnasium ordeal, and now I know without a doubt that I’ll be skipping that particular rite of passage.

Some lessons you can’t learn without actually experiencing them, and Katrin’s pretty good at taking the bullet for me.

But even in moments when I felt out of place or unsure of my choices, my family has been unwavering in their support.

That being said, I’d be lying if I said it was all smooth sailing. I’ve certainly had my fair share of moments where I thought my dad might be my biggest hater.

Take the time I asked him to look over one of my papers—big mistake. Katrin did warn me, but again, there are some lessons I must learn for myself. I still remember him telling me that my writing was incoherent. I ended up getting an A+ on that paper.

Ella: 1
Darren: 0

To all the students who call him friendly and kind, know that you got it good.

That being said, he’s one my biggest supporters. Just a few weeks ago, my dad asked me why I don’t identify more with my school, implying I am smart and should foreground that more.

I jokingly told him it was because it would ruin my cool factor, but in truth, my approach to school has become second nature.

I’ve stopped thinking about it in the way I once did. School is no longer an identity I’m trying on; it’s just what I did.

For Christmas, my dad gave me two anthology books featuring up-and-coming authors—one of which was a required reading for one of my English courses.

This isn’t the first time he’s done this.

There are two possibilities here: either my dad is a literary genius who predicted my exact taste in books years before I did, or he just has an uncanny habit of buying me required readings. Either way, he’s two for two, and I’m starting to believe he might just be a prophet.

It took me some time to realize that my family’s influence wasn’t just a force to be resisted, but one that shaped me in unexpected ways.

Despite my numerous runaway attempts as a child—sorry, Mom and Dad—I eventually realized there’s no place like home. And having my family around saved me.

So here’s to my family: my mom, the glue holding my world together, who knows exactly when I need a hug (or when I need a good rant about mystery meat). Katrin, who I would follow all the way to an 8:30 am physics class. Matthias, who’s the keeper of all my weirdest music and film references—the one who never looks at me like I’m speaking in riddles when I quote obscure songs. Then there’s my dad, my strongest interlocutor and seemingly my biggest critic.

And yet, no one makes me a better version of myself. Not to mention, he seems to be the star of my last two articles.

And finally, to the insufferable yet (hopefully) loveable heroine—me.

~

As I go on to graduate, I’m entering an era where I am no longer English Major Ella. I’ll just be Ella, now with an English degree.

And honestly, that’s terrifying.

What happens when the title I’ve held onto—when my sense of purpose, my sense of self—gets stripped away and I’m left standing in a void? The idea of just being Ella, without the buffer of “English major” or “student,” is unsettling in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

While the English major title might fade into the ether, one thing’s for sure: I’ll always be Professor Hannesson’s daughter. That’s a legacy that doesn’t require a degree to back it up—whether anyone at the clubs realizes it or not.

Another certainty: despite my fears and existential panic, give me a year and I’ll be waxing poetic on whatever platform or ear I can get to listen. As I step out of my comfortable title and the warm embrace of my family, I may not know where I’m going, but I’m pretty sure it involves a lot of self-reflection.

So here I am—once a psych major, now an English major and soon-to-be graduate, forever a person who will probably change her mind at least a dozen more times.

But for now, I know this: I love words, I hate early mornings, and I will never willingly sit through a graduation ceremony.

That’s me.

Me, who has spent years writing essays about identity, only to realize mine is still being revised, rewritten, and footnoted with doubts and moments of clarity.

Me, who now knows that belonging isn’t synonymous with fitting in. Me, who has stepped into the unknown before and will do so time and time again.

Ellisif, signing off.