Michelle Obama congratulated the class of 2018 by sharing a photograph from her “scary” time at Princeton University in the early 1980s to Instagram on Tuesday.
“I know that being a first-generation college student can be scary, because it was scary for me,” the former first lady wrote. “I was black and from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, while Princeton’s student body was generally white and well-to-do.”
Obama, 54, noted how she’d “never stood out in a crowd or a classroom because of the color of my skin before” but soon found close friends and a mentor who gave her the confidence “to be myself.”
“Going to college is hard work, but every day I meet people whose lives have been profoundly changed by education, just as mine was,” Obama said. “My advice to students is to be brave and stay with it.”
She captioned the post with the #ReachHigher hashtag, in reference to the program she launched at the White House in 2014 which aimed “to inspire every student in America to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school.”
Obama paid tribute to her parents, Marian and Fraser Robinson, with this picture earlier Tuesday:
Her father “taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word,” Obama wrote. Her mother “showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice.”
On Wednesday, she shared this photograph from her wedding day to former President Barack Obama.
“You can’t tell it from this photo, but Barack woke up on our wedding day in October, 1992 with a nasty head cold,” she wrote. “Somehow, by the time I met him at the altar, it had miraculously disappeared and we ended up dancing almost all night.”
Obama has promised over the coming days to share more old photographs from her upcoming memoir, BECOMING, which is scheduled for release in November.