Every Life Has a May Fifth
Some accomplishments are bigger on paper. Others are bigger inside you. There is a date in your life when one became the other, and you may not yet know which date it was.
- Dedicated to Professor Verne Geidl, who held a door open in Idaho when I was not yet sure I had the right to walk through it.
There is a date somewhere in your life that an outsider would scroll past. A date that does not appear in bold on your resume. A date that, if you mentioned it at a dinner table, would not draw the same attention as the larger achievements you have stacked on top of it since.
Yet that date is the hinge.
It is the day a question you had been carrying privately, for months or for years, dissolved. The day you learned something about yourself that no one could ever take back. The day you crossed from auditioning into being. We rarely realize in the moment that this is what is happening. We sometimes only see, decades later, that this was the threshold.
For me, that date is May fifth, 1988.
I Came Carrying a Question
Thirty-eight years ago today, I was a young man from Egypt being awarded a master’s degree in engineering in a small American town in Idaho. I had come from Suez Canal University. At that time it was a small institution. It was not famous. It was not on any list anyone in America would recognize. I had arrived carrying my acceptance letter and a question I had not said out loud, even to myself. Do I actually belong here?
I do not mean this in a political or even a cultural sense. I mean it the way every young person carries a question when they step into a room they are not yet sure they have the right to be in. Will I be able to do real research? Will my thesis hold up under scrutiny? Will I stand in a room and present an idea without my voice betraying my nerves?
I did not know. The answer was not yet inside me. I had brought the question with me across an ocean.
Then May fifth came. Late afternoon, I held a note that I am being awarded a master’s degree from an American university. The question dissolved. Not because I had been given permission to belong, but because I had earned it through work that someone else had read and accepted. That is a different thing. It is irreversible. Once you are initiated into a community of practice, you cannot be uninitiated. It is the external verification that your question has been answered.
Someone Held the Door Open
But here is the part of the story I have not yet told you. No one crosses a threshold alone. There was a professor at that university whose name was Verne Geidl. He was a structural engineering professor. He was also, as it turned out, a structural human being. He held things up. He carried weight quietly. He did not only supervise me. He saw me before I had fully seen myself.
He treated me, a young man from a small university in a country he had likely never visited, as if I were already the person I was hoping to become. He was a supervisor and a friend. He cared. In a country where I knew almost no one, and in a language I was still learning to think in with full confidence, that care was the “structural beam” beneath everything I built that year.
I do not know whether Professor Verne Geidl is still with us. Years pass. People move. Lives go where they go. What I know is this. Thirty-eight years later, the gratitude has not faded. If anything, it has clarified.
If you are reading this and you remember a professor, a manager, an early boss, a stranger who treated you as if you already belonged before you yourself believed you did, you know what I mean. That person is part of your May fifth.
The threshold has a date. But it almost always has a hand on the other side of the door, holding it open just long enough for you to walk through.
“A threshold has a date. It almost always has a hand on the other side of the door, holding it open just long enough.”
Bigger Degrees Did Not Replace It
Years later I earned a doctorate. By every conventional measure it was more significant. More years of work. More original research. More credentialing power in the world.
But the doctorate did not answer the question. The master’s already had.
When I received my PhD, I was no longer asking whether I belonged. The doctorate was the act of someone who already knew. It was an extension, a deepening, a continuation. It was important. It was not the same kind of important.
This is what we miss when we look at someone’s life from outside. We assume the largest credential is the most meaningful one. The person living that life knows the truth. The credential that mattered was the one that resolved the question. Every credential after it is a continuation of an answer already given.
“The accomplishments that change us are not the largest ones. They are the ones that answered a question we were too afraid to ask out loud.”
Trophies Are Not Thresholds
There are two kinds of accomplishments. There are decorations and there are initiations. Decorations sit on the wall and tell the world something about you. Initiations change the structure of who you are. They are not interchangeable. Often they are not even the same accomplishment.
A young scientist’s first published paper can be more important than the academic chair she holds thirty years later. A first-generation student’s bachelor’s degree can be more important than the master’s that follows. A new manager’s first hard conversation can be more important than the title she earns five promotions later. The threshold is the moment you discovered something about yourself that you did not know was true. Everything else is a long, patient continuation.
The risk of confusing these two is large. We keep chasing decorations and miss the thresholds. We collect titles and wonder why we still feel like we are auditioning. The decoration cannot do what only the threshold can do. The threshold has a date. The decoration has a frame.
“Some accomplishments hang on a wall. Others rearrange the furniture inside you.”
Every Life Has Such a Date
So here is the question I want to leave you with.
What is your May fifth?
It will not be obvious to anyone except you. It may not be the day you graduated. It may not be the day you were promoted. It may be the day a teacher said, almost casually, that you had done good work. The day a stranger in a foreign country treated you as if you had always belonged there. The day you led a small team for the first time and discovered that you knew what to do. The day you said something difficult to a person you loved and did not lose them. The day you finished something you had quietly been afraid you could not finish.
These dates are not trivial. They are sacred. They are the moments at which the question we have been carrying privately dissolves. We do not always know in the moment that this is what is happening. We often only realize, decades later, that this was the hinge.
If you have already had your May fifth, honor it. Mark it. Return to it once a year, the way I return to mine. This is not nostalgia. It is a way of remembering who you actually are, beneath the decorations.
If you have not yet had your May fifth, it is coming. Be ready to recognize it. The world does not announce these dates. They walk in quietly, often inside ordinary days, often through doors held open by people whose names you will remember for the rest of your life.
Today is May fifth, 2026. Thirty-eight years after Idaho. I have done many things since then that the world considers more important. None of them holds the same weight inside me as that memorable day in a small town with a kind professor who chose to see me clearly.
The person who walked into the Master’s program was carrying a question. The person who walked out was carrying an answer. Every life has a May fifth. That is why we remember.
Prof. Bassem Khafagy 05 May 2026
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Prof. Bassem Khafagy : An academic leader, best-seller author, award winning researcher, and strategic thinker whose work spans the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He is currently dedicating his time to rethinking the “University” as a transformative force in society. Prof. Khafagy is the founding force behind several global academic initiatives, most notably the World Universities Foundation, WUF, World Summit on Universities, WSU, and the Re-Imagine University Newsletter & book series.
The visual compositions throughout this newsletter and the series are original copyrighted works by Prof. Bassem K. Khafagy. They are crafted using advanced technological tools, including artificial intelligence, guided entirely by the writer’s artistic vision and design sensibility. In a series about being you, it felt only right that the art itself reflect that spirit of creative possibility. © All rights reserved, 2026.