Felipe Esteban Rojas has a passion for sports and a true pride in his profession.
He's the commissioner and a participant of Ultimate, one of the newest sports offered by the Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association (CMSA), and also plays five other sports. He even met his boyfriend through the CMSA sports world.
Rojas teaches Spanish language and culture and recently was recognized by the University of Chicago, which awarded him the 2013 Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching, an award established in 1991 in honor of Wayne C. Booth, the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor in English Language & Literature and the college.
"My students took it upon themselves to nominate me, a graduate student teacher, for the [award and] I am the first in my department to ever be awarded this great honor," Rojas said. "I really love teaching Spanish language and culture. You get young students who come from different disciplines and backgrounds, and you teach them to communicate is a completely foreign language. There is nothing more rewarding, as an instructor, than to see a student go from pronouncing the 'h' in [Spanish word] 'hola' to being able to hold a conversation with a native [Spanish] speaker."
Rojas is now working to complete his dissertation, entitled "Hemos visto un mal tan fiero: The Figure of Ganymede in Spanish Golden Age Theatre." He should be finished over the next year, and then "ideally [I will] find a tenure-track job at a university where I will be teaching Spanish language, culture and literature," he said.
Rojas said the biggest life obstacle he's had to endure was coming out to his mother and grandmother. "Coming from a very typical Latin family and also being the only child, it was very challenging to have to discuss my sexuality with them, especially my grandmother," he said. "We had a huge falling out when I first came out and I didn't speak with either of them for about six months.
"My mother is the strongest woman I have ever met and she sacrificed so much when she decided to move us to Canada, so when I told her that I am gay I felt like I disappointed her. My grandmother is a very religious woman who had many opinions about what my life should look like, so when I waved my rainbow flag she felt like I was insulting her and the family.
"After many conversations and their realization that 'God makes everyone in His own image, so He must have made Felipe just the way He wanted,' they have become my biggest support group. I cannot think of anything better than having my mother and grandmother constantly tell me how proud they are of the adult I have become."
THE STATS
Age
30
Neighborhood
Rogers Park
Relationship status
In a relationship with Shawn Albritton
Job
Instructor at Chicago State University and graduate student at the University of Chicago (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures)
Hobbies
Reading, hiking, cooking and Groupon-ing
Favorite movie
Bambi
Favorite TV show
Mujeres y Hombres y Viceversa, a Spanish dating show
Four people (living or dead) who you'd like to have dinner with
Kylie Minogue, Gabriel GarcÃ�a MÃ�rquez, Cosme Pérez (aka Juan Rana) and Alejandro Cascallar Barreiro, "my great-grandfather who was exiled from Spain and ended up in Santiago, Chile"
Little-known fact
"I got tear-gassed when I was 7 at a political rally in Chile."
