Obama’s daughter ready for Harvard

WASHINGTON — Malia Obama was 10 years old and in the fifth grade when her father became president, and this week she starts a new chapter.

She’s off to Harvard, ending a gap year that sparked a national conversation about the trend and unfolded across multiple continents.

Harvard’s dorms opened to freshmen Tuesday and classes begin Aug. 30.

The university is a familiar place for Obama’s alumni parents, who both graduated from Harvard Law School. It also is no stranger to celebrity students and is the alma mater of eight U.S. presidents.

That President Barack Obama’s friends and former administration officials hold faculty posts at Harvard means his daughter won’t be entirely on her own. A Secret Service detail will ensure that, too.

“How time flies,” said Anita McBride, a chief of staff for Laura Bush, whose daughters Barbara and Jenna greeted Michelle Obama and her daughters at the White House after the 2008 election.

The White House florist had made bouquets for the Obama girls. The Bush daughters gave them the grand tour, teaching them how to slide down the banister in the solarium. The departing White House daughters also gave the Obama girls a friendly letter full of their well wishes and advice.

“Here’s a girl who’s grown up in the public eye and who’s been able to maintain a normal, private life and make regular, everyday decisions about her education and life choices,” McBride said.

Delaying her Harvard start meant that Malia Obama, 19, would arrive on campus with less visibility and pressure than had she started in 2016 during her father’s final months in the White House, said McBride, who is now with American University’s School of Public Affairs.

After Barack Obama left office, the family moved into a house in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood, letting Sasha Obama finish Sidwell Friends School, from which Malia Obama graduated in 2016. Sasha, 16, will graduate from Sidwell in 2019.

The Obamas announced in May 2016 that Malia Obama had been accepted to Harvard but was taking a gap year.