1. It’s actually Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama
LaVaughn? … didn’t see that one coming did you? Miss Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is originally from Chicago’s south side. But being from a thorough black neighborhood and having a stereotypical black name like LaVaughn didn’t keep her from shinning bright. As a child, she grew up in a tiny apartment that only had one bedroom that she shared with both her parents and her older brother named Craig. Craig and Michelle slept in the living room space which was separated from the bedroom with a hanging bed sheet. Her father was an employee at the local water filtration plant. Despite her humble beginning, Miss Michelle persevered, worked hard and conquered. A living example of the American dream.
2. Michelle Obama is one of a total 3 First Ladies with a graduate degree
That’s right, Michelle Obama outshined herself academically from a very young age. We all know she’s smart but you probably don’t know that she skipped the second grade to enter a gifted program in the sixth grade. That’s a huge leap. She graduated high school and went on to Princeton University. You can read her well written dissertation on Princeton-educated blacks and the black community. From there, she went on to the Ivy League Harvard Law School which is where she met Barack Obama back in 1989. Michelle was assigned to mentor Barack who was a first year law student at the time. Having developed a healthy professional relationship with Barack, Michelle even tried to set him up with one of her friends! But it never quite worked out. Barack Obama worked up the courage to ask her out the following summer and the rest is history.
3. She quit her job in corporate law to work in public service
Michelle Obama has always been a confident woman who knew what she wanted despite the obstacles and resistance. Even her high school teachers told her that she was setting her sights up too high when she was applying at Princeton, but she used that doubt to fuel her passion. After working as a corporate lawyer for some time at Sidley and Austin, she quit to pursue a career in the public sector. Initially, she worked as an assistant to the mayor. She worked her way up to the assistant commissioner of planning and development for the city of Chicago and eventually became the executive director for Chicago’s Office of Public Allies which is a national service program that trained young people to work in the public sector before they would start working at the University of Chicago’s University Medical Center. It’s apparent that she was always driven to make good use of her power for the people.