Exclusive | Meet the adults going back-to- school after a decades-long summer break

When Valentino Eriksen decided to retire from his 50-year career managing a rowdy Miami Beach nightclub, the 69-year-old refused to slow down.Instead of sleeping in and lounging on the beach with a book in hand, Eriksen is up at 5 a.m.— the same ungodly hour he would wrap up his club shift — to grab a coffee before running to his first college class of the day.Eriksen, a journalism major and aspiring e-commerce business owner studying at Miami Dade College, is one of many ambitious elders who have gone back to school to start over and embark on a new career path.Finally embarking on a higher-ed journey that had been on pause for decades, the Miami resident enrolled as a freshman in fall 2025.After his 1976 high school graduation, he began studying accounting and economics at Jackson Community College, but the workforce called his name early, and his “I’ll go back in a few years” promise turned into a half-century hiatus. Over the next 50 years, Eriksen dabbled in various hospitality jobs, such as launching a South Florida restaurant in 1988 for an 11-year run before taking the reins as general manager at the nightclub, Twist. By 2020, when the pandemic caused a temporary closure of the club, Eriksen saw it as an opportunity for a career pivot.

“I know that the business of digital journalism and content is something I want to do,” he told The Post.An aspiring writer, the 69-year-old realized he “needed more skills to be relevant,” admitting that the only writing he had done over the past few decades had been in emails.Taking advantage of Miami Dade College’s older adult program, offered at various colleges to those who want to further their education while balancing a job or family, Eriksen traded late-night bottle-service transactions for classes on sentence structure and journalism ethics.He might have more life experience than his classmates, but that doesn’t stop Eriksen from experiencing the same back-to-school anxiety most students fac...