Barack Obama may the president of the United States, but his life didn’t always look so bright.
On Tuesday, Jan. 26, first lady Michelle Obama appeared on “The Real,” where she didn’t mince words when asked about how a youthful Barack fared in school and who got the better grades, she or her husband. “I mean, he will say it, it’s not even close,” said Michelle, pointing directly at herself. “Barack fooled around in high school. He’s said it, he didn’t take school seriously in high school, he barely got his work done – he was a bum,” she continued.
“And it took him a second because, you know, he had to grow up a little bit,” she told the hosts, who interviewed her in the East Room of the White House. “Now, he went to college, he went away right away but it wasn’t until his second year, he transferred from Occidental to Columbia College and he was like, ‘I gotta make something of my life. I gotta get it together.'”
She went on to explain that the president, who was raised without a father, “was going through some stuff” and “had to figure himself out as man.”
“It is never too late,” she added. “The president of the United States screwed around in high school and he still got his act together. He did okay.”
Needless to say, Obama who’s always been very candid about his past, has come a long way. In fact, he and Michelle have become quite the advocates for education. By 2020, the power couple hopes to increase the world’s proportion of college graduates by way of the Reach Higher initiative, which aims at inspiring every student across the nation to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school, whether at a professional training program, a community college, or a four-year college or university.
In addition, Michelle and Barack began championing efforts to help adolescent girls around the world attend and complete school through the Let Girls Learn initiative, a government-wide effort launched last summer.
