the high school
one was not
— confident
and popular
and a risk
taker. These
traits would
serve me well
in my business
career, but
would later get
me in trouble. The new David Applegate was real. However, I chose to
ignore rather than process the issues from childhood. Consequently,
the unpopular, unattractive, closeted high school kid who was con-
stantly made fun of was always just below the surface.
I partied my way through 4 years at Fresno State, skipping numerous
classes along the way and still managing a 3.9 GPA (4.0 was the top
GPA back then). I majored in psychology, but took an elective market-
ing class during my junior year (consumer behavior), and the light went
off. Marketing was my calling! Instead of changing my major to busi-
ness, I completed my degree in psychology and was accepted into the
MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the top
10 MBA programs in the country. While at Cal, with the help and sup-
port of one friend in particular, I finally came out. And for the first time,
I felt attractive and felt that there were people out there (OK, at this
point, guys) who were attracted to me. This was a very powerful feeling
for someone who had never felt that before and it fed into my new con-
fident personality.
I graduated in 1982 in the middle of a deep recession and was fortu-
nate to get an offer from Allergan to participate in the SmithKline
5 1
A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
z WHITE-COLLAR CRIME The Federal Prison Camp in Taft, Calif., where
David Applegate began serving his 5-year sentence earlier this year.
KMD
Architects
