Former US first lady returns to girls’ school she visited in 2009 to talk about self-doubt and aspiration

Michelle Obama, the former US first lady, has said she still feels impostor syndrome despite her eight years as America’s most powerful woman and her success as an advocate for women and girls across the world.

On Monday Obama returned to the inner London girls’ school she first visited nine years ago to talk about her life and the importance of education and working hard at school.

She told her rapt audience of 300 secondary school girls that her feelings of self-doubt had remained with her since childhood.

“I still have a little impostor syndrome; it never goes away. It’s sort of like ‘you’re actually listening to me?’ It doesn’t go away, that feeling of ‘I don’t know if the world should take me seriously; I’m just Michelle Robinson, that little girl on the south side who went to public school.’”

Obama shared her vivid memories of not fitting in when she was a working-class girl in Chicago because she was so determined to be the best student, to always work hard and learn as much as she could.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The former US first lady Michelle Obama, who has written a book called Becoming. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

“I found myself having to walk a bunch of different lines. There were some kids who didn’t like kids who were smart and got good grades. There were some kids who criticised the way I talked and said that I talked like I was white, which was another way of saying that you think you’re better than other people.”

It was not just children but “teachers who underestimated me every step of the way”.

After she applied to Princeton her high school counsellor told her: “I don’t think you’re Princeton material.”

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She added: “The person whose job it was to help young people reach their dreams, she saw me and, whatever she saw in me, told me that my dreams were too high.”

Even though she got into Princeton she still remembers the feelings of doubt that it provoked. One of the ways she got over it was looking around and seeing people who were not as talented, gifted and hardworking as she was.

“I still feel that at some level I have something to prove because of the colour of my skin, because of the shape of my body … who knows how people are judging me. It takes some time and it takes some maturity.”

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Obama was visiting London to promote her memoir, Becoming, which has become a publishing sensation, selling more than 3m copies around the world since it came out two weeks ago.

She writes in the memoir that she first visited Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (EGA) school in 2009 and was not prepared for the powerful emotions she felt. “As I settled into a folding chair onstage and started watching the performance … something inside me began to quake. I almost felt myself falling backward into my own past.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michelle Obama greets pupils at an event at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in London. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

At the school, 20% of pupils are the daughters of refugees or asylum seekers, while 92% are from a black or minority ethnic background.

On Monday she said universities needed to do more to encourage pupils from schools such as EGA, in order to be more diverse.

“Part of what we have to do is expose them to the opportunities. All kids can only dream things that are known to them. If they don’t see elite colleges, if they don’t know they exist, they don’t know what to dream of.”

Colleges and universities needed to reach out to children when they were as young as 13. “We can’t wait until we have two years out from college. We need to start talking to them early – that includes not just conversations but visits – what is it like in a dormitory, to sit in a lecture?”

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She also spoke directly to the girls of the importance of supporting each other. “We as women don’t have the luxury of tearing each other down; there are enough barriers out there.

“There are enough people out there ready to tear us down. Our job is to lift each other up, so we have to start practising now. There is no room for mean girls and cliques and social complications that naturally come at your age. I want you to be mindful of that.”

She added: “That is one thing we can do better as women – we can take better care of each other.”

Later, at a sold-out event at the Royal Festival Hall in London, she spoke candidly about her eight years as first lady and how irritated she had become by the media interest in what she was wearing and the obsession over protocol.

Obama recalled a state visit to the UK at which the Queen, driving her car, picked them up from their helicopter at Windsor and told them: “Sit wherever … it’s all rubbish, just get in.”

She added: “Barack is so incredibly fond of Her Majesty. I think it is because she does remind him of his grandmother Toot. She is smart and funny and honest in ways that are just like Toot. He is a huge fan.”