Let Girls Learn issue has always been personal for me. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn't have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work - and a lot of financial aid - I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.

Hope and change are hard-fought things.

For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time.

Not everybody is going to run a marathon or do a triathlon. It's not necessary to do that to be in good health.

When you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity...you do not slam it shut behind you...you reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you're going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them.