Barack Obama has admitted that he struggled through his initial childhood years to find answers about his multicultural,multi racial heritage.As a very small child he found difficult to accept such vast differences between his mother and father�s skin color.In his own words he says that he had a middle class upbringing.During his teenage years,he even used cocaine,marijuana and alcohol to deal with his internal conflicts,something which he regretted later.Now,he thinks it was a big mistake and he was morally wrong.He never touched illegal drugs again after those years.
After high school,Barack moved to Los Angeles and studied at the Occidental College for two years; from there to Columbia College in New York.He majored in Political Science with specialization in International relations in 1983.In the meantime his father had died in Kenya in 1982.Barack Obama moved to Chicago after spending four years in New York and working at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG).He was hired as Community organizer by Developing Communities Project,a church based community organization.The organization wanted a young black man to help them collaborate with black churches in the south side.From 1985 to 1988,Obama worked there as Director of the organization.He helped blacks fight for their rights from the city government.He worked to improve the living conditions of poor neighborhoods which faced crimes unemployment.Working in a small organization taught him organizational skills.He was always good with words and was known for making speeches which people could emotionally connect to.He worked with Saul Alinsky whose method was �agitation� which meant getting people angry enough about their current state of things that they are compelled to take some step and do something.During his tenure at Developing Communities Project,the staff at this organization grew from 1 to 13 and so did their budget.Then,he worked as consultant and instructor for Gamaliel Foundation,a community organizing institute.It was 1988 when we first traveled to Europe and then to Kenya for few weeks,where he met his fathers family for the first time.
Barack Obama felt that law was a medium which could facilitate activism and community organization.So in late 1988,he entered Harvard Law School.In his second year at college,in 1990,he was elected as the president of law review.This role required him to be editor- in-chief and supervisor of law review staff of about 80 editors.As he was the first black to be elected for this position,it was a widely reported and much publicized event.It had taken Obama long sessions of discussion with conservatives to support him.While still in law school in 1989,he worked as an associate at Sidley and Austin law firms.He met his future wife Michelle,also a lawyer,here.Newton Minnow was a managing partner here.Minnow,later introduced him to many of the Chicago�s top leaders.In the summer of 1990,he worked at Hopkins and Sutter and finally graduated from Harvard in 1991; after which he again moved back to Chicago where he practiced as a civil rights lawyer.His could have easily taken up a god job after Harvard but his values and mother�s teachings had taught him to do something for the society and the less privileged ones.The publicity that he garnered at Harvard,because of his election as first black president of Harvard law review,led him to an offer by University of Chicago law school to write book on racial relations.He was offered a fellowship from the university and an office from where he could write the book.In the meantime,after dating for few years and being engaged for a year,Barack married Michelle Robinson in 1992.Obama initially thought he would complete the book in one year but it took much longer as it was a memoir and he included bits about his personal life also.He traveled to Bali with his wife and wrote most of the part of the book there.In mid 1995,the manuscript was published.Book was named Dreams From My Father:A Story of Race and Inheritance.Few months after this publication his mother Ann,who had moved to Hawaii from Indonesia in 1994,died of ovarian and uterine cancer.He won the Grammy award for the audio version of this book.