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via BCNN1:

Michelle Obama shared a rare throwback photo on Instagram Tuesday and reflected on her “scary” experience as a first-generation, black college student at “white and well-to-do” Princeton University.

“This is me at Princeton in the early 1980s,” the former first lady captioned the vintage photo of herself. “I know that being a first-generation college student can be scary, because it was scary for me. I was black and from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, while Princeton’s student body was generally white and well-to-do.”

“I’d never stood out in a crowd or a classroom because of the color of my skin before. But I found close friends and a mentor who gave me the confidence to be myself,” she continued. “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, who graduated from Princeton in 1985, also encouraged new college students to “be brave and stay with it” and extended her congratulations to the Class of 2018.

The former first lady previously recounted her difficulties adjusting to life at Princeton in a 2014 video aimed at fellow first-generation college students.

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