Although technical courses came easily to him, he had always been bogged down by courses that demanded a lot of reading. While he was at New Mexico State, he stopped by the reading laboratory and took a free reading test that he saw advertised. They told him, “Young man, you will have trouble finishing college.” Brown laughed and told them he had already finished college. But he realized now why reading assignments had always been a burden and why he had to get a running start on the weekends.
He also found that he was very weak in vocabulary because he had avoided reading in the past. With his characteristic self-discipline, he overcame this reading deficiency. He took several reading courses and added 6,000 words to his vocabulary by studying the dictionary.1