President Obama’s eldest daughter Malia, 17, is set to graduate from high school this spring. A fact that President Barack Obama would rather avoid. The president opened up about his daughter’s big day during a lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Detroit on Wednesday. Obama told his lunch companions that he turned down a request to speak at Malia’s graduation, saying he will be too emotional.
“Malia’s school asked if I wanted to speak at commencement and I said no,” the president said Wednesday while speaking in Detroit. “I’m going to be wearing dark glasses and I’m going to cry.”said Obama.
Obama’s daughters Malia and her younger sister Sasha attends the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Vice President Joe Biden’s grandchildren also attends the school.
“One piece of advice that I’ve given her is not to stress too much about having to get into one particular college,” Obama told a group of students in Iowa last fall. “Just because it’s not some name-brand, famous, fancy school doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get a great education there.”
Malia will graduate from high school this spring, and like most teenagers, she’s been getting ready for her next steps. She’s prepping for college life by getting some internship experience, including a choice gig working with Lena Dunham on the set of Girls.
According to ABC News, Obama’s comments could not fully be heard since the conversation was sporadically caught on radio, but it was probably more about crying. Malia, who is presently a senior in high school and graduating this spring, spent last year touring schools such as Brown, Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Columbia her father’s alma mater. However, she has not yet announced which university she would like to attend.
The president has never been shy when it comes to talking about his daughters, Malia and Sasha. Last September, he admitted to being emotional over Malia’s first day of her senior year. “She puts her head on my shoulder and she says, ‘Daddy, you know, you realize this is probably going to be the last time that you ever send me off for my first day of school,’” he said. “I had to look away.”
Malia has toured an impressive group of schools, including six of the eight Ivies – Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania – as well as New York University, Tufts, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, Barnard and Wesleyan.
“Malia’s graduating in June. I can’t talk about it,” Obama said during lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Detroit with Mayor Mike Duggan and others. “They’re going to leave their daddy. It’s shameful!”
Malia has tried to stay under the radar during her college tours, despite the schools putting on their best show for the president’s daughter. To help Malia keep a low profile on the tours, First Lady Michelle Obama has opted to stay home for some of the trips.
“The whole point is for you to push yourself out of your comfort level, meet people you haven’t met before, take classes that you hadn’t thought of before,” Obama said in Des Moines last fall. “Stretch yourself. Because this is the time to do it, when you’re young.”
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