Malia Obama Graduates High School

17-year-old Malia Obama is graduating high school Friday in Washington D.C.

The president declined an invitation to deliver the commencement address for his daughters’ private school, Sidwell Friends, and blamed his emotions.

Malia will be attending Harvard in fall 2017, after taking a gap year.

Today is also Sasha Obama’s 15th birthday, so the First Family has a lot of reasons to celebrate today.

President Barack Obama waves as he walks with his daughter Malia Obama across the South Lawn on return to the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, after their family vacation in Hawaii.

The president hinted that he will be sentimental as he watches his eldest daughter, who was 10 years old when they first moved into the White House, graduate.

We can’t say it enough – the White House just won’t be the same without our awesome First Family.

Secret Service put up some magnetometers so that the attendees could be screened at the private high school Sidwell Friends in Washington DC.

The president describes Malia as one of his best friends, and their nightly talks influenced his thinking on social issues like gay marriage.

The first lady has said her daughter wants to be a filmmaker. Malia has had summer internships on the NY set of HBO’s Girls and in Los Angeles on a CBS sci-fi drama, since cancelled, that starred Halle Berry. “She’s ready to make her own way”. But delaying the start of college could keep her close to her tight-knit family as it prepares for another big transition next year: The end of Obama’s ground-breaking presidency.

The pre-teen whose swing set still sits just outside the Oval Office now turns heads when she’s spotted around town – including driving her vehicle. In a house with 132 rooms, she and her sister did not share one.

It’s a day every schoolkid dreams of: high graduation.

Braces appeared when Malia was 12. The First Daughter has grown up in the spotlight as a result of her father’s election to office, and will likely cast her first vote ever for his successor this November as she turns 18 on July 4.

Malia was 10 years old when Obama entered office, nearly eight years ago.

By his own admission, Obama has always been dreading the day his first born would mark the end of her high school career.