Choosing Jaida

Abstract

When I first started working on this project, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. I told my advisor, Marin, that I wanted to write about my daughter Jaida. She was a year and a half old at the time and had become my entire world since I got pregnant. I knew that if I hadn't had her I would still be in the position of working on my Senior Individualized Project, but everything else about college, particularly studying creative nonfiction, would have been different. Not only had she guided most of my decisions through college and my life outside of college, but she was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me. I never imagined myself choosing to keep a child while I was still in school, and at a school like Kalamazoo College, I stood out in both positive and negative ways. My experience and writing nonfiction through the past few years made me very aware of the results of that choice to keep her. I felt obligated to write that story; I just wasn't sure how to focus it.