Michelle Obama Takes to the Trail - New York Times

Michelle Obama Takes to the Trail - New York Times: "Interviews with people who know Mrs. Obama say she chose, even as a young adult, to strive for the opportunities that were closed to previous generations.

Mrs. Obama grew up knowing, for instance, that her maternal grandfather, a carpenter, was squeezed out of the best jobs in Chicago because as a black man he was not allowed to join a union. But she said she had also been taught not to see race as a barrier, to look at the world in terms of what is possible, not the other way around.

“My parents told us time and time again, ‘Don’t tell us what you can’t do,’ ” she said. “ ‘And don’t worry about what can go wrong.’ ”

She talks on the campaign trail about high school advisers who tried to dissuade her from applying to Princeton because they thought her scores were not good enough. (She graduated with honors in sociology in 1985.)

She talks about college counselors who said similar things about her desire to go to Harvard Law, from which she graduated and went on to one of the top corporate firms in Chicago.

“I realized that gnawing sense of self doubt that lies within all of us is within our own heads,” she said in Atlanta."“They said my achievement must have been the result of racial preferences. And I am certainly not supposed to be standing here, maybe to become the next first lady of the United States.”

Asked about the role of first lady, Mrs. Obama said she saw it as a full-time job. But, she hastened to add, she reserved the right to change her mind if she gets there."