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school for Michelle's brother. When he wasn't being challenged in the classroom, he was starring on the basketball court.
    But when it came to taking on challenges, Michelle had him beat. Her school, Whitney M. Young, was a true adventure.
    The distance from home was one reason. But Michelle could handle the daily trips, even though they sometimes added up to three hours. The classes at Kennedy-King College that were part of the gifted program at Bryn Mawr elementary had given her confidence.
    Whitney M. Young was also meant to be an experiment for Chicago. It opened just two years before Michelle started ninth grade. It was a magnet school, drawing kids from all over the city. Chicago had long been a collection of ethnic neighborhoods, with boundaries that were invisible but difficult to cross. Whitney M. Young was meant to erase those boundaries, at least for its students. It would be the first time that many of them, Michelle included, were in a class that reflected Chicago's diversity. It was a big step for the city, and for all the students who chose to attend.
    However, what really drew Michelle and most of her classmates were the school's superior academics. In addition to taking advanced placement classes, Whitney M. Young students could take college courses at the University of Illinois. In a way, it was like the gifted program at Bryn Mawr. It had no ceiling on the opportunities it offered. That made it perfect for a student who constantly pressured herself to take on new challenges.
    Dagny Bloland, a teacher at Whitney M. Young, echoed this in an interview with
Washington Post
reporter and
Michelle
author Liza Mundy: "When [Michelle] applied and came here, the tradition of leaving one's neighborhood to go to high school was very new, and a person had to be very gutsy to do it. For most of the kids who came here in those times, the idea that you would take two or three buses and a train to come here was a very new idea.... It was a real experiment to come here. I think you had to be the sort of person and the sort of family that would put education above everything else."
    "Gutsy" might be the perfect word to describe Michelle in high school. It was hard work for her. She was one of those students who do not do well in tests, something she still mentions in speeches. So she made up for it in other ways. Her brother remembered her doing her homework for hours without stopping, while he would rush through his, play basketball, and watch television. But she made the honor roll all four years, and was inducted into the National Honor Society.
    By this time, her mother had already stopped pushing her. There was no need. Harriette Cole of
Ebony
magazine asked Marian Robinson, "What would happen if [Michelle] came home with grades that weren't the best grades?" Michelle's mom thought that was pretty funny. "That didn't happen," she said, laughing.
    But it almost did. A typing teacher gave Michelle a B, even though Michelle had scored enough for an A on the scoring scale the teacher had posted for the class. The teacher's reason? She just didn't give As. That was her philosophy. Michelle was furious. That just wasn't right—and Michelle had long before developed a way of dealing with things that just weren't right. "She badgered and badgered that teacher," Michelle's mother remembered with admiration and amusement. "I finally called her and told her, 'Michelle is not going to let this go.' " Michelle got the grade she'd earned.
    Another word comes up again and again in interviews with classmates: "focused." Classmate Michelle Ealey Toliver told biographer Liza Mundy, "She didn't goof off like some other students.... She was on a very advanced, focused track." (That made her the exact opposite of her future husband. "I was sort of a goof-off," Barack once told his
Chicago Tribune
reporter and biographer David Mendell.)
    Both the public that knows Michelle through the media and the family that knows her best would be