Mark Lazaga:  

After leaving high school I continued to work as an electronic technician at a local business in Sunnyvale. Here I mostly used the knowledge that I gained in 4 years of Mr. Thorson's Electronics classes at Peterson and experience gained while working full-time as a technician throughout high school. After a little over a year at this I realized that it was not going to take me where I wanted to go; so I enrolled at De Anza College. Actually what I found out was that I had wasted my high school years (not to be confused with being wasted during those years, alright maybe). I spent 4 long years making up all the things that I should have learned at Peterson. I also became interested in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics continuing with these subjects at San Jose State University; eventually graduating with a degree in Chemistry. During my last year and a half at SJSU I was fortunate enough to land a job at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose. What a great experience! I was able to work with and learn from some great scientists. I worked mostly on physical chemistry projects such as Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (which two scientists won a Nobel Prize for in 1986) and other things that I have long since forgo...Expand for more