Lawrence Braylock:  

Life Summer '77 The day after receiving a reward for High School sports I was on my way to Parris Island. “You’re obligated to serve your country” the recruiter said, that led me to enlisted in the Marines in 1976. Now I was on the plane to bootcamp. Later I realized that having bent on the track team, taking karate a few years and being young prepared me for the physical aspect of bootcamp, but the mental part was a different story. Being intimidated by three drill sergeant night and day took some getting use to which I did. Three months later that seemed like forever came quick, and now I was on my way back to home to start the fall session at Cleveland State Univ. I would do another three year as a Marines reservist and was discharge from active reserve duty as a sergeant. As for my first year at CSU I finished with a GPA of 2.54, which was a disappointment to me. College there turned out to be very lonely; I didn’t have anyone to turn to with my difficult studies. Classes were so large and professors were untouchable. There were student help clinics but you felt like a number and not a person. Summer 1978 That summer while traveling on the Euclid bus heading toward Windemere Station, around 43rd & Euclid,something caught my eye that got me off the bus. I approach the 4300 building and walked in. I spoke with a rep name Price, we spoke for a few days. Soon I made a decision to leave CSU and signed up to attend Electronic Technology Institute (ETI) for an associate degree in Electronics Engineering. I started classes that fall, my plan was to get a two year degree and get a job, then have the company pay for my bachelor degree. I went on to graduate from ETI with a B average. In the final quarter of the program, IBM visited the school and was looking to recruit the top students (I being amoung them) to be trained on their new personal PC. This was everything I had planned for. Training locations were in Chicago or California. On graduation (...Expand for more