Page 142 - A Life - my Live - my path

ULB

Twice in 10 years, I've given the wrong information. In other
words, twice I've said something stupid. It's interesting to
note that, despite their apparent casual attitude that senior
students can still have, it was the reaction time, less than 15
seconds. This was impressive and showed that listening and
comprehension were perfect.
A fundamental difference between the corporate world and
the academic world is the date and time of a meeting and the
date and time of a lecture. While it's annoying to have to
postpone or reschedule a meeting, it's almost impossible to
postpone or reschedule a lecture.
Part of my job as a company director and senior
consultant also involved traveling, sometimes to work for
international customers, sometimes to attend group

meetings. All my travels took into account my schedule at
ULB, which had absolute priority.

Anecdote: a bit of pride
One day, I had to go and work for Renault Portuguesa in
Lisbon for a week as part of a start-up phase. The days
went by, one meeting followed another. On Wednesday,
during one of these meetings with the customer's general
management, I explained that the following Thursday
I would be out, as I had a course load at the ULB that
I couldn't move. Nonetheless, I would be back on Friday
morning, as the plan was to work on Saturday and, if need
be, Sunday too. They had all accepted this very well, and
I saw in it a kind of satisfaction in knowing that their

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