"I grew up in Washington D.C. and always felt the right thing to do was serve my country," he says. "But at the same time I was taking courses in East Asian history. I was confused about the whole thing."

Faced with a military conscription notice for June 15, however, Brooks decided he did not feel opposed enough to Vietnam to dodge the summons. He enlisted in Officer Candidate School.

"Policy decisions are irrelevant," Brooks says. "It is my job as a citizen to serve."

Against his father's advice, Brooks married his high school sweetheart weeks before leaving for the Navy. After one year of training school, Brooks spent two years on a ship in the Mediterranean and Caribbean as a supply officer.

"It was not an easy way to start off a marriage," Brooks says. "My father told me it would be tough, but I didn't take his advice."

Three years after graduation, Brooks was faced with another decision. He knew he wanted to return to Cambridge, but couldn't decide how to do it.

"I decided I wanted to go to law school or business school or both," Brooks says.

He chose to apply to the Harvard Business School because its two year stint was cheaper than the Law School's three year program.

But Brooks felt a little strange enrolling in the school that undergraduates booed at his college commencement.

"The Business School was always looked on very disdainfully by the undergraduates," he says. "We would laugh at them because they always walked around with brief-cases."

And once he was there, Brooks felt very out of place.

"The Business School is a snake pit. I hated it," he says. "The first year in Business School was the worst year of my life."

Brooks says the competition at the school was "terrible," and that it "brings out the worst in people."

But Brooks decided to stay with business. After graduating with a degree in finance, he joined a small investment counseling firm in Philadelphia. Brooks says it was a great time to be in business, and says he got "fairly wealthy" at the growing firm.

"I got caught up in the ride," Brooks says. "The business was doing very well, and it was impossible not to get caught up in it."