AFRICA | An 85-year-old woman named Arlyne Frankel, who enrolled in the university after he retired, has bagged a bachelor’s degree at Florida International University, fulfilling her lifelong dream.
Frankel, from Florida, retired at the age of 79 after working her entire life as a marketing and fundraising consultant for the Public Broadcasting Service. She told ABC News that now that she has divorced, she is single with children and grandchildren, and she decided she wanted to accomplish all of her lifelong dreams.
“First, I thought I’d take another job because my original plan was to work until the day I died. Or so I thought. Then I took stock, and decided I wasn’t going back to work. I thought, I’m going to live out my life. And what am I going to do? I want to accomplish my dreams,” she said.
She mentioned that her first dream was to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, a coming-of-age ceremony in the Jewish religion traditionally celebrated around a child’s thirteenth birthday.
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Frankel wanted to celebrate it because she was unable to have one as a young girl, and had always dreamed of having one. At her Bat Mitzvah, she announced to the crowd that the next dream she would like to fulfill is to graduate from college.
Initially, she started college at the age of 18 at Boston University in 1954, but she dropped out because of financial difficulties, and her poor grades discouraged her.
“I quit and stopped at the end of the second year. I had financial problems among a few other negative things going on. My bad grades didn’t motivate me and I had studying issues,” she said.
When she returned to college later in life, she learned that she had a learning disability, which she also believed contributed to her being unmotivated to complete school.
“I had an undiagnosed learning disability, so I just thought I wasn’t very smart. I didn’t have anyone who could identify what was going on with me, so I gave up,” she said.
Even though she was worried about her lack of college education, she did not let it affect her, instead, she worked hard and became successful. “That feeling of not doing well stayed with me,” she said. “Then I moved to New York and I got a lot of jobs because I’m a hard worker and I had to learn about life,” Frankel said.
”I came from a small town, and little by little, I accomplished things. I had to be very brave and believe in myself. I learned through my successes and failures. In every job I had, I learned a little more. I was a very, very hard worker and put in extra time,” she added.
Frankel enrolled in Florida International University at the age of 80, and she completed the degree in five years. She graduated magna cum laude at Florida International University with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Even though she has achieved her dream, she still wants to do something. Frankel aspires to be a motivational speaker, hoping that her story will urge people to push through their challenges.
“I want to be a motivational speaker. Not just about going back to school, but people who want to do other things, who say, ‘No, I’m too old.’ I’m here to say, ‘It’s never too late,” she said.
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