Fire Me Up

Charlottesville

August 21, 2025

I’ve alluded to thinking about my past. This story keeps coming back to me.

My undergraduate days were hard for me academically. Sure I graduated with honors but the coursework was tough — especially electrical engineering classes, heat transfer and materials science. And partial differential equations. The classes I enjoyed most were economics and accounting. Which tells you why I ended up getting an MBA! By far the best part of UVa were the life-long friends I made and the experiences we had together.

After graduating in 1981, I joined VEPCO as a nuclear engineer. I still remember how surprised I was how easy it was to stand out. I enjoyed the work, had fun both at work and after work and got high marks on my reviews.

Probably two years into this “work life” a couple of things happened. First, I began to think work shouldn’t be this easy — maybe I need more challenge. Second, a friend at work got accepted at Northwestrrn business school. I will never forget his last day at VEPCO. He said to me, “Hey Lucian, when I come back here in a few years, I bet you are still going to be here.”

That statement has haunted me for over forty years. What did he mean by that? That I had a lot of potential and was going to rise through the ranks at VEPCO? Or did he see me as complacent, the proverbial wounded bird in a cow pie? The word “unmotivated” keeps bouncing around my head after all these years; is that what he thought?

Kent’s words were probably what got me to apply to business schools. I remember in one of my Darden essays I wrote about how work was too easy, that I wanted a challenge, I wanted to accelerate my career.

I certainly got that challenge at Darden. A bit more than than I anticipated!

I never saw Kent again. And it’s been too long to look him up. 95 percent of the time I thank him for firing me up. But I still wonder what he meant.