ABOUT

Hi, My name is Hailey Love. I am a sophomore at the University of Michigan studying Business Administration. I am also a minor in writing which is how I’ve had the opportunity to pursue my passion for writing and present my work to you today. In the beginning of the semester, we were tasked with picking out an origin piece that would inform our writing for the rest of the semester. We’d be responsible for manipulating and furthering the concepts in this piece, ultimately developing the website that you’re navigating now to showcase our final project, a larger work born out of the smaller experiments that we did this semester. Personally, my goal this semester was to have fun with my writing, create things that I feel connected to, and learn more about my writing process. 

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The piece that I chose as the centerpiece of my writing this semester was a poem that I wrote in high school. This piece reflects on my relationship with my father and his influence on me as a young woman. Throughout the semester I deviated from the themes in the poem, developing short stories about some of the memories with my dad, and then a fictional “split story” piece that was based on decisions that my dad made in his life. As I began thinking about my final project, I had no clue where my work up to this point should lead me. I contended with a bunch of different options including building off of either of the ideas that I explored in my experiment, creating something really research-heavy and different from what I had already done, or scrapping everything that I had been thinking about and finding something new to sink my teeth into. It was a difficult process and I really didn’t feel connected to any course of action that I was considering. 

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I realized after a long time of thinking and trying out things that didn’t feel right that my final piece needed to recognize the impact of my dad’s role in my life and be a “thank you” of sorts. So often, he has been “Mr. Make it Happen” in my life and didn’t get enough credit. Even as I’ve been working on this project, I learned more about how much he loves me and has cared for me in ways that I didn’t even know. When I called him to ask for some pictures of us from my childhood that I could include in my project, he sent me hundreds of photos of me, my friends from preschool, our family, and all of these moments in my life that I didn’t even know he captured. It meant the world to me and I stared at the pictures for hours, thinking about how incredible it is to have the support of my dad. 

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Deciding on a name for this project was also really challenging. No phrase seemed to capture all of the things that I’ve been thinking about and I didn’t want to give up on giving it a name that really resonated with me. I’ve decided on the title “Daddy's Baby,” which is a what my dad calls me to this day. My parents have always referred to me as "the baby" and it's a name that brings me a lot of comfort. I hope that this project sheds light on my story as a way to underscore the importance of the role of a dad in his daughter's life and inspire readers to cherish each stage of their life with loved ones. The pieces that you are about to read and all of the photos you see are essential to my story and putting it together this way seems fitting after all of the reflection and growth that I’ve done this semester.  Thank you and enjoy!