JESSICA ONI
Staff Writer
A few weeks before graduation, Jaimee Rojas’ best friend gave her a copy of Brennan Manning’s book The Ragamuffin Gospel. Since she was only days away from completing her degree in English, cracking open another book didn’t exactly make Rojas’ mouth water.
When the Admissions office offered Rojas a job as a counselor shortly thereafter, she accepted with gratitude. “I appreciated Pepperdine the minute I got here,” she says.
Becoming a staff member has allowed Rojas to enhance her view of Pepperdine. “Staff members’ hearts are just as big as the hearts of the students,” she says.
As an admissions counselor, she traveled 4-6 weeks out of the year, helping recruit and market at high schools around the nation. “It was inspiring knowing these kids only perceive Pepperdine through you,” she says. “I never took too much ownership in it, though.”
She soon found out that the job had its ups and downs. A self-proclaimed “sucker for relationships,” Rojas enjoyed getting to know her co-workers and bonding with incoming and prospective students. At the same time, she had to deal with rejected students calling and emailing to find out why they hadn’t been accepted. “You have to calm them down, reassure them that they’re meant to be wherever else they’re going,” she says.
It wasn’t until nearly two years later that Rojas, pregnant and alone, finally cracked open the book she had been so reluctant to read years earlier. She was desperate for a sip of sanity, or at least a metaphorical shoulder to cry on. As she flipped through the pages of Manning’s book, she was reassured. “Everything in it spoke to me about grace,” she says.
The book, whose tagline “Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out,” explains its purpose, spoke directly to Rojas about the concept of grace. Manning describes it in this way: “You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now…Do not try to do anything now…Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. If that happens to us we experience grace.”
Rojas says she considers herself lucky on so many levels. “I had the perfect pregnancy, the perfect birth, and an almost perfect child,” she says with a smile. “But it’s hard to be a single mom.”
Last year, Rojas traded in her job as an admissions counselor to become the new Associate Director of Admissions Marketing. Today, she spends much of her time doing research alongside her team of 12 student interns. Working together in focus groups, they brainstorm ideas and techniques that will help spread the word about Pepperdine to high school students and their families. Rojas says that they currently have about 20 publications and 10 multimedia pieces circulating that help fulfill this goal.
Rojas says her job wouldn’t serve its purpose without the aid of her interns. “It’s from their eyes and their hands,” she says with a smile. “I’m more of a supervisor.” Her new position also allows Rojas to spend more time with her son, who is now two-and-a-half years old. “We volunteer at an elderly home together,” she says. “They like to tell me how to raise him.”
Reading Manning’s book has helped Rojas to tear down a common misconception about her alma mater as well as a misconstrued view of who she’s supposed to be as a Christian. “You don’t have to be perfect to be here,” she says. In his book, Manning says he struggled to come to the same conclusion. “Justification by grace through faith means that I know myself as accepted by God as I am,” he says. “Genuine self acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind-games or pop psychology. It is an act of faith in the God of grace.”
The common notion that college graduates do not use the degrees they acquire does not apply to Rojas, who says that “being able to use words” and finding unique ways to say “Pepperdine is a great place,” has made her job a whole lot easier.
Having worked for Pepperdine for five years now, Rojas says she has seen the university undergo many changes. “The student body makeup has become more academically centered and Christian centered,” she says. “The competition level has surged over the past few years and I see kids that are changing the world.”
Rojas says she’s watched as new programs have been put into place in various divisions and offices around campus. She says that opportunities to serve have sky rocketed since she graduated, via popular programs such as the Spring Break volunteer program Project Serve.
When not busy working, Rojas enjoys going to G-rated movies with her son, reading, and hanging out in bookstores. She also enjoys setting up social events for her office, participating in competitive sports such as mud football and setting aside time for arts and crafts. “I’m such a craft buff,” she says with a laugh. She also attempts to visit Guam, her birthplace and home until she was fifteen, as often as possible. “Guam is very people-centric and slow, but a good slow,” she says.
When she was asked to lead a club convo this semester, Rojas knew she couldn’t decline. She and fellow Pepperdine alum Lindsey Lockman, who runs the Jumpstart program for the Volunteer Center, decided to lead a convo class together. “We’re a good balance,” Rojas says. “Lindsey was raised Christian and I’m new. I come with that newness and she comes with the familiarity.”
When it came down to deciding what the topic of their club convo should be, Rojas recommended basing the six week class on the book that had changed her life, Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel. The class, appropriately titled “The Ragamuffin Gospel Club Convo,” has been a memorable experience for both the leaders and the students. Each week, passages from Manning’s book are discussed over a snack of home-baked muffins.
Rojas says she hopes to stay at Pepperdine for at least a couple more years before possibly moving to San Diego to be closer to her son’s father. She is currently working to get her MBA, un-anxious to call an end to her Pepperdine experiences just yet. “They don’t have the same quality of people in one place like they do here,” she says.
Perhaps her future is unclear to her now, but as The Ragamuffin Gospel preaches, “In faith there is movement and development. Each day something is new. To be Christian, faith has to be new- that is alive and growing. It cannot be static, finished, settled.” Rojas trudges on; embracing herself for the ragamuffin she is and will likely always be.
03-08-2006